


The Oneida Trespass: Murder in a Free Love Commune

by WilliamSimsBainbridge



Category: 19th Century CE RPF
Genre: Multi, Murder Mystery, Oneida, Utopia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-02
Updated: 2020-08-02
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:02:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 71,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25670278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WilliamSimsBainbridge/pseuds/WilliamSimsBainbridge
Summary: In 1879, John Humphrey Noyes, leader of the radical group-marriage Oneida Community, believed someone was planning to kill him, so he hired the man known as the commune detective, Amasa Blodget, to investigate.  He must quickly determine whether the assassin was Professor Mears at Hamilton College who loathed Oneida’s marriage system, James W. Towner who had come from the failed Berlin Heights experiment, Sewell Newhouse the trap maker, or one of the dozen women who had born a child of Noyes, such as Harriet Noyes or Harriet Worden. Every character was a real person, and only the murder plot is of uncertain validity.
Comments: 1





	1. Summoned from Zoar

Amasa Blodgett, at ninety-one the oldest member of the Zoar commune, rocked in the chair the Shakers had given him for his services during the Civil War, his gnarled hands gripping the package from Oneida. He was well past the age for heavy farm work, and he loathed the community’s woolen mill. But he occasionally labored with his hands in the machine shop, and he still fancied himself a competent wainwright. Most days, as today, he sat for many hours in the common room of the hotel, asking anyone who came in about his business and dispensing free advice. Certainly he had far more experience of many things than any of the younger men. Born between the Revolution and the signing of the Constitution, he liked to think of himself as the last of the colonials. After a roving life in the West, when past fifty he became a Shaker, and after eleven years among those enthusiastic people had come to sober Zoar twenty-eight years ago. He had lived here ever since, with the exception, of course, of a few excursions to assist other communes when a murder or equally foul crime required his expert attention.

He examined the package and attempted to deduce what it was and what it portended. He liked to play a little game with himself, pausing when some crucial new information was almost within his grasp and challenging himself to deduce what it was. By its heft and feel, the package appeared to be a fat book; he could sense the shape of the binding through the heavy, parchment-colored paper in which it was wrapped. Tight-knotted string held it together, and every fold was crisp and precise. The sender’s address, “Oneida Community, Madison County, New York,” was stamped with some kind of printing device, aligned perfectly with the edges of the package, and his own address was carefully handwritten in black ink. But the sender’s name was scrawled in large, curling letters of uneven sepia: “John Humphrey Noyes.”

He had never met Noyes, but certainly every resident of America’s hundred far-flung communal experiments had heard of him. He was the group-marriage messiah, the founder of a pair of communes in New York and Connecticut that practiced some kind of free love. An eccentric intellectual who wrote dogmatic tracts about his own perfection, he had somehow collected a swarm of followers willing to subordinate their own sexuality to his. Amasa stopped himself from thinking further in this direction, reminding himself that the stories he had heard about Noyes might be very far from the truth. In any case, the man was a writer and an egotist, so there was good reason to guess that he had written the book most likely concealed within the package.

Amasa’s eyes fixed on the postage stamps, a perfect block of four twenty-four-cent green and violet stamps, depicting the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The cancellation was nicely centered, and the stamps themselves were perfectly aligned with the edges and addresses. He sniffed to see if his keen nose, far more sensitive now than his faded hearing and eyesight, could learn anything about the person who had licked them. Usually he could learn little more than whether the licker did or did not chew tobacco, but this time he detected the faint odor of flowers, as if the stamps had been touched with rose water rather than being applied to a human tongue. 

Did Noyes select these particular postage stamps to express his own independence? Certainly an egotist might want to avoid affixing portraits of national heroes who would detract from his own glory, such as Franklin or Jefferson. Then Amasa looked up from his examining with a pained expression, recalling the strange feeling that came over him whenever he saw one of those new Lincoln stamps. How peculiar it was to lick the face of someone he had known well, and press it on a letter! 

From the marble-top table to the right of his chair he took the leather case that he always carried, and drew from it the sharp shears that served so many uses for him. A single snip released the string. Then he methodically opened the package, careful not to damage the contents, and slipped out the fat book that indeed lay inside. A glance told him the title and author: _History of American Socialisms_ by John Humphrey Noyes. With a slight grunt of pleasure, Amasa laid it on the table, then returned to the wrapping paper. A few more snips and he had cut out a long rectangle, the stamps at one end and Noyes’s signature at the other, which he placed on the volume to serve as a bookmark. The wastepaper went in the reed basket under the table, but he balled up the string and placed it in his pocket for future use.

When he opened the book, a sealed envelope fell out onto the floor. He bent over stiffly, reaching for it with the three remaining fingers of his left hand. At that moment, young Johann the hotel boy ran in and rang the little bell near the door that announced meals. In a smooth movement that was so swift Amasa could not thank him, the boy picked up the letter, dropped it in Amasa’s lap, and ran out. Scrawled on the envelope in the same looping sepia letters as Noyes’s name on the new bookmark, were the words: “Emergency! Read this missive immediately!” 

Instead of opening the letter, Amasa placed it along with the shears in his leather case and buckled the miniature straps that held it shut. He removed his bifocals, folded them, and placed them in his waistcoat pocket. He put the case beside the book on the marble table, gripped the arms of his chair and pushed backward. With only a slight tremor to betray his advanced age he pulled himself to his feet as the rocker bounced forward. He adjusted his trousers and waistcoat, hung the leather case by its strap from his shoulder, grasped the book, and walked through the small lobby to the hotel’s front door. Some evenings he ate dinner there, but most times his storytelling abilities were needed at one or another of the families in the village. Tonight it would be dinner with Georg.

In the warm light of the setting sun, Amasa contemplated his surroundings. The little town of Zoar, though founded six decades earlier, had as yet no foot pavements. It remained without regularity of design. The houses were for the most part in need of paint. There was about the place a general air of neglect and lack of order. If he were uncharitable, Amasa would have said there was a shabbiness to the commune, which he had noticed also in the Aurora community in Oregon, and which contrasted greatly with the clean, tidy perfection he had seen among the Shakers and the Rappists. Still, the Separatists of Zoar had achieved comfort and wealth, by the peasant standards of rural Germany that the colonists had brought with them. It was his home now, and he had known for a long time that he would never have another. 

At times, he felt a mild longing to be among people like himself, New Englanders who spoke English properly and did not expect his German to be perfect. Perhaps that was the illusion that had kept him so long among the Shakers, the feeling that they were his people when in fact they hated folk with imagination so much that eventually even his great tact had failed to keep him out of trouble. These Germans were different. They accepted him so long as he observed their simple rules, and at his age it was not difficult to do without pork and tobacco, or for that matter a romantic affair with a lady. They had no elaborate rituals, and they forbad dancing, which was a relief after the incessant prancing about and shaking that gave the Shakers their name.

With their limited ambitions, the Zoarites were relieved from severe toil, and they had driven the wolf permanently from their doors. Much more they might have accomplished, but they had not been taught the need of more. They were sober, quiet, orderly, very industrious, and economical. The amount of ingenuity and business skill which they had developed was quite remarkable. Thus Amasa was content to live with them, and their modest Sunday services met his need for religion. One of their saving graces was that they had no clergymen. But at times he longed for a hint of adventure. The opportunity to leave the commune on a mission of justice, to resolve some heinous trespass, delighted him.

“What story will you tell us tonight, Amasa,” Georg inquired with a hint of anticipation, after the stew bowls had been cleared away.

“A brief one, my friend, because I also have some news to share with you about one of Zoar’s sister communes. The story that popped into my head may have something to do with the news; at least I feel it does. Let me see how to begin.” After a moment’s pause, Amasa started to speak, in an initially lyric tone that gave them no hint where his story was going to end.

“This is a parable about Daniel Webster, the great orator. On a warm but stormy day, Webster was restless in his house and wished to go out for a ride. Then the rain ceased, the clouds parted, and bright sun shone down. A few minutes later, he was cantering along a trail, urging his horse to avoid the muddy spots, when he saw a hat sitting in the middle of a large puddle. With puckish exuberance, Webster dismounted and gave the hat a good kick.

“‘Ouch!’ a voice exclaimed, and Webster discovered to his dismay that he had just kicked the head of a man who had sunk into the mud up to his ears.

“‘Oh, my good fellow! I am dreadfully sorry! Is there anything I can do to help you? May I take you back to your home?’

“‘No thank you. I’ll be fine,’ the man said. ‘I’m on horseback.’”

Amasa allowed his friends to guffaw and slap their knees for a moment, then he leaned forward with a serious countenance. “The motto of this story is that there is often more to a man than you first notice.” A few sighs and grunts told him that his audience appreciated the humor more than his philosophy, but he continued in the same vein. “I have received a letter and a gift from a very unusual man, John Humphrey Noyes of the Oneida community, who is famous for his free love ideas. Most of you may have heard about his experiment over in New York State. I wonder whether there is more to Noyes than his image as a sexual transgressor might suggest.”

“Ach,” exclaimed Georg with a touch of scorn, “this free lover Noyes does not deserve your attentions. You know the proper behavior between men and women as well as I do. As our holy Principles state quite clearly, all intercourse of the sexes, except what is necessary to the perpetuation of the community, we hold to be sinful and contrary to the order and command of God. Complete virginity or entire cessation of sexual commerce is more commendable than marriage.”

“Yes, I do know the Principles,” Amasa replied, “and they seem well designed to sustain a community in which all are equal before God.”

Georg pondered for a moment, and commented, “Marriage is on the whole unfavorable to community life. It is better to observe the celibate life. But it is not, in our experience here at Zoar, fatally adverse. It only makes more trouble. And in either case, whether a community permit or forbid marriage, it may lose members.”

“Consider this,” Amasa suggested. “The Shakers, with whom I am well acquainted, practice complete celibacy. Because they produce no children of their own, they rely upon adult converts, young orphans, and children bound over to them by their parents, to sustain their population. Even so, it appears they are not half so numerous as they were a generation ago. Perfect celibacy ensures against the division of loyalties that every lover must feel between his beloved and the community, and it binds the person to the holy regimen of a God-directed life. But it does not, as you say, provide for the perpetuation of the community. So here at Zoar, we take a middle road between the Shakers and the world’s people. We accept sexuality as a necessary evil within faithful marriage, to be embraced only when it is proper to bring a child into the world. Thus we believe we have found the correct balance.

“But ponder the practice of free love from this standpoint. If everyone is constantly running from last week’s lover to the next infatuation, there is neither time nor devotion enough for couples to develop a relationship that competes with the tie between the individual and the community. If each man loves every woman, and each woman loves every man, then the community is held together by a web of ties. Here at Zoar, as we sadly know from a handful of recent cases, a romantic couple can be the rudimentary religious schism, a conspiratorial sect of two persons that breaks easily away from the church, just as Adam and Eve departed from the Lord after they had eaten from the tree of carnal knowledge.”

“Blodgett, enough! You cannot seriously be claiming that Noyes has discovered a better route to God by making a detour through the swamps of sin!” Georg was beginning to take the conversation too seriously, and the mood of pleasant conversation was evaporating.

“Oh, no, no, my friend! I am sure there are a hundred things wrong with basing a community upon free love. To begin with, it is sinful. Next, it may communicate nasty diseases from any newcomer to all the community. Perhaps most frighteningly, it would keep all the women pregnant much of the time, and babies must pile up to the rafters!” Nervous laughter did much to restore the congenial mood. “No, I cannot imagine that Noyes has found a better solution than we have here at Zoar. Still, it is a fascinating question whether free love can possibly function as an enduring system, and I would like to see for myself what its result may be. This is not prurient curiosity, I assure you, but a scientific question that may help us understand the general conditions under which real community can come into being and endure. Besides, I have promised to be ready to give aid whenever called upon by our sister communes.”

“This sister seems to be a fallen woman in need of redemption,” Georg muttered. “Are you sure the Lord is ready to use you as His instrument of salvation? I suspect that the Oneidans have climbed down into the deepest pit of sin under their own volition, rather than having stumbled and fallen into it. Do you think they are willing to climb out when you bid them rise? What exactly have they asked of you?”

“I do not know,” Amasa replied hesitantly. “I have not yet read the contents of a sealed envelope that I assume contains an explanation of the matter.”

“Well, where is it? You don’t suppose we are willing to let you keep a secret of it do you? You have tantalized us with half a story, so you must tell us the rest.”

“Very well,” Amasa said as he retrieved his tool case from under his chair. “I assume that Noyes wants me to come to Oneida to solve a mysterious murder that occurred recently. Some of my exploits have dealt with other problems, but murder is the one crime that cries out so loudly that no one can ignore it. I am surely not the person to call when a defector absconds with the commune’s cash, or when the prophet’s holy scriptures turn out to be forgeries. But you are right; I should not guess any longer. Let me read it to you.”

“My dear brother Blodgett,” Noyes’s letter began. “I am in grave danger. Someone is trying to kill me, whether a member of the Oneida community or one of our outside enemies, I do not know. My suspicions would especially focus on Professor Mears at Hamilton College just over the hills, because he has led a growing campaign of calumny against us, but I am doubtful whether he has sufficiently direct access to our lands to have carried out the several cowardly threats that have already been made.

“I had heard of your successes assisting other socialist communities with their most sensitive difficulties, and when our recent troubles mounted to an intolerable level I consulted trusted contacts I have among the Shakers about your character and your capacity at what I gather is an advanced age. They were most laudatory concerning your integrity and they assured me that your vigor remained undiminished. Surely you will not begrudge your fellow socialist this request. Although I am grooming one of my sons to be my successor, the Oneida Community at present cannot survive without my constant leadership. Thus my death would have the gravest consequences. I have taken the liberty of enclosing a draft for one hundred dollars drawn on one of the most prominent New York banks, plus a round-trip rail ticket between Zoar and Oneida. If you are able to come, please do so immediately. There is no need to respond to this letter prior to your arrival. God bless you! John Humphrey Noyes.”

Georg did not protest further, and the conversation turned to the practical details of getting Amasa ready for his trip. The following afternoon, Georg drove Amasa in his farm wagon to the tiny shack and set of benches that passed for the Zoar railway station. Despite the fact that the residents of Zoar were called Separatists, and their commune was in a rural area of Tuscarawas County, they were not separated from the world. A branch line connected them directly to the railroad between Cleveland and Pittsburgh. Compelled to wait more than an hour at the railroad station, Amasa listened to men cursing in the presence of women and children. He had not heard such language in more than a year, not since his last excursion beyond the border of Zoar to settle that nasty business at the prosperous Amana communes. The curses reminded him how much coarseness there was in the lives of ordinary people, confirming again his judgment that the life at Zoar, however bland, was a long step higher, more decent, more free from disagreeables, and upon a higher moral scale, than the average life of the surrounding country.

Amasa dragged his two carpet bags toward the stairs of the nearest train car, as the conductor motioned him to hurry up. Apparently there was no profit to be made waiting for an old man to board at a minor station, especially when the train was an hour late. A young man with curly hair boarded ahead of Amasa, then turned and helped him hoist the bags. The brief trip to the main line was most unpleasant, because the short-line engine and cars were of distinctly pre-war vintage, providing a jolting ride and filling the air with ashes. The journey northward was far easier, and in the soft chair of a modern passenger coach Amasa was able to nap most of the way.

He arrived at Cleveland late in the evening, knowing he would need to wait at the magnificent Union depot until the next day, for the train to Erie and points east. Covering two and a half acres and costing half a million dollars, this grand structure included such amenities as separate “parlors” for the ladies and gentlemen. A sculpture of George Washington, crowned with a triumphant laurel wreath, was balanced by one of General Grant holding symbols of both peace and war, an olive branch and a brace of cannon balls. The keystone of the arch over the main entrance carried a beautiful bas-relief, widely remarked as a stunning likeness, of the head of the chairman of the building committee, Amasa Stone, Jr. Try as he might, Blodgett could see no resemblance between that Amasa and himself. 

At a lunch counter he stood in line behind a couple from Providence with their nine-year-old boy, who said they were on their way to China by way of San Francisco. The observant waiter called out, “Here’s yer real, fine Boston brown bread, just the thing for down-east folks to take overland.” As he sold some to the family, the waiter commented they looked like they had just come from “Wall Street,” completing the proof that he had little idea what or where Providence really was. The wife commented that the loaf could not claim a nearer relationship than fortieth cousin to the fine rye and Indian bread of New England. Amasa tasted some and agreed, trying to recall the sweet, oily bread his mother had baked in New Hampshire. He obtained a huge dill pickle, some milk punch, and a seat on one of the ubiquitous benches in the vast waiting room.

Amasa became aware of a curly-haired young man sitting on a bench facing him. The man seemed to be watching him, but at that distance his eyes could no longer focus perfectly, so he was not sure which way the man was looking. Amasa took the sheaf of railway schedules and his bifocals from the pockets of his waistcoat, and pretended to inspect the list of trains from Cleveland eastward. While seeming to scrutinize the pages, he caught a glance of the man’s face, and saw his pale blue eyes looking back. He thought he had seen that face before, then wondered if this was the same person who had helped him board back at the Zoar station. Amasa smiled, and waved the sheaf of schedules as to express the comradeship of a fellow traveler, but the man looked away as if he hadn’t seen. 

With a grunt, Amasa put away the schedules and took Noyes’s fat volume from one of his bags. Unwilling to let the author dictate the way he should read the book, he glanced on the last page and noticed that the final entry in the index was: “Zoarites, 135.” Turning to the indicated page with a chuckle, he found that the reference to his own commune consisted of a single paragraph, quoted from an essay published by Jacobi back in 1858: “Joseph Bimeler, a German, in 1816 founded the colony of Zoar, in Tuscarora County, Ohio, twelve miles from New Philadelphia, with about eight hundred of his German friends. They are Bible believers in somewhat liberal style. Bimeler was the main engine; he had to do all the thinking, preaching and pulling the rest along. While he had strength all went on seemingly very well; but as his strength began to fail the whole concern went on slowly. I arrived the week after his death. The members looked like a flock of sheep who had lost their shepherd. Bimeler appointed a well-meaning man for his successor, but as he was not Bimeler, he could not put his engine before the train. Every member pushed forward or pulled back just as he thought proper; and their thinking was a poor affair, as they were not used to it. They live married or not, just as they choose; are well off, a good moral people, and number about five hundred.”

Amasa tried to recall Jacobi’s visit, but could not. Certainly there were several difficult months after the death of Bimeler − or Bäumler, as the Germans preferred to call him − and Amasa’s own concern at the time was looking into the circumstances of Zoar’s leader’s demise. He began scanning through the book at random and found that Noyes spent most of its pages in minute description of a large number of non-religious communes founded in America under the influence of the European utopian visionaries, Robert Owen and Charles Fourier. German religious communes like Zoar, Amana and Harmony got short shrift, while prominent sections near the end were devoted to the Shakers, who had come to America from England, and Noyes’s own Oneida. Finally Amasa turned to the introductory chapter and received a shock.

“Many years ago,” Noyes’s book began, “when a branch of the Oneida Community lived at Willow Place in Brooklyn, near New York, a sombre pilgrim called there one day, asking for rest and conversation. His business proved to be the collecting of memoirs of socialistic experiments. We treated him hospitably, and gave him the information he sought about our Community.” Amasa’s eyes rushed down the page to find the pilgrim’s name. He was A. J. MacDonald.

“MacDonald!” Amasa spoke the name aloud. He remembered MacDonald well, not as a living person but as a murdered corpse that required investigating. Spread-eagled with a pick-ax embedded in the skull, MacDonald’s body had lain in the New Jersey snow that winter of 1854 at the North American Phalanx. It had been preserved against wild animals by a farm shed that the members of the commune had lifted from its foundations and placed over him. When the local doctor and constable came to write up the death certificate, they had been required to crawl along a board set several inches above the snow, so they would not disturb any evidence. 

This Phalanx was the most successful of the many Fourierist secular communes set up in the 1840s, and they were known for being very systematic in everything they did. Amasa recalled the great difficulty he had convincing them about the identity of the murderer, and getting them to do anything about it, they were so convinced in the perfection of their own judgment. He quickly checked Noyes’s table of contents and found that he had devoted fully three long chapters to the North American Phalanx, and even mentioned MacDonald’s last visit there. However, Noyes seemed unaware of the murder and wrote that MacDonald had died of cholera. For a moment Amasa wondered whether he had been right to put out that false story, but then reminded himself of the reasons and decided that after a quarter century he could be forgiven for one big lie.

Since he had not known MacDonald in life, he was interested to read Noyes’s description of the man: “We remember that he was a person of small stature, with black hair and sharp eyes. He had a benevolent air, but seemed a little sad. We imagined that the sad scenes he had encountered while looking after the stories of so many short-lived Communities, had given him a tinge of melancholy. He was indeed the ‘Old Mortality’ of Socialism, wandering from grave to grave, patiently deciphering the epitaphs of defunct phalanxes.” Yes, small stature and black hair, but the eyes had not been so sharp when Amasa gazed into them, sightless and frozen solid.

Scanning the rest of Noyes’s introduction, Amasa was reminded of the other details of MacDonald’s story. Scottish by birth, he had become a rather late disciple of the socialist ideas of Robert Owen and came to America to join the movement this side of the ocean where numerous Owenite communes had been set up. But by the time MacDonald got here, they were in ruin, and most of the Fourierist communes were not doing much better. Working as a printer, he had naturally collected many publications of the far-flung American communes and then decided to write a book to be titled _The Communities of the United States_. In 1851 he had even mailed a questionnaire to them all, asking twenty-one questions about their origins, aims, and experience with communism. When he died, he had amassed a trunk full of documents, including his own observations from visiting many of the communes personally. Amasa recalled vividly that one of the greater challenges he faced investigating MacDonald’s murder was preventing a sinister conspiracy from destroying the precious contents of that trunk. 

Amasa was gratified to read that Noyes had resolved to write his own scientific treatise on the communistic societies of the United States and had fortunately secured the trunk of documents from MacDonald’s brother-in-law to form the basis of his own scholarship. Now Amasa held in his hands a book of nearly 700 pages that would not exist but for his own resolute action more than two decades earlier. For a moment he thought of it as a gift from himself of long ago to himself of today, then as a long-awaited return on an investment. But it was Noyes’s book, and in his anticipation to read it thoroughly, Amasa only half realized that he was strongly prejudiced toward liking this man, Noyes, when he met him. After a few more minutes of scanning the volume, his eyelids told him it was time to rest, and a blanket from one of his carpet bags converted the bench into a frankly uncomfortable bed.

A train was scheduled for ten in the morning, and Amasa looked anxiously around when nothing happened at that time. A conversation with a trainman revealed that the locomotive had broken down just as it arrived, and repairs were in progress. At one o’clock, he saw that the trainman was posting the sign announcing that it was finally ready to board, and he called a baggage porter to help him with his heavy pair of carpet bags. While a mere wainwright cannot pretend to appreciate steam engines, Amasa was something of an aficionado, and he recognized the engine as one made in his home state by the Manchester Locomotive Works. It was a 4-4-0 with four little wheels on the guide truck, four big drive wheels, and short enough not to need any other wheels at the hind end.

When the train pulled out of Cleveland, Amasa was sitting on the right side of the rather dirty coach, gazing southward. He doubted that he would see any sign of the North Union colony of Shakers, because he felt sure the tracks ran well north of it beside the lake. But as he gazed in the direction he thought it must be, he saw its pastures in his mind’s eye, with the sawmill and the workshop where he had learned the fine art of broom making. He wondered if North Union were still operating a profitable dairy and selling vegetables to the people of the city. Cleveland itself had changed much since the days when he had lived there. Iron and oil were building a great metropolis that might soon expand to engulf the rural commune. Could the Shakers and their cows hold out against the onslaught of machines and money? Would their thousand acres soon be invaded by refineries and mills, or would the wealthy bankers and industrialists build fine homes on the soil that had been tilled for more than fifty years by communists?

The train ground to a halt, in the middle of nowhere. Perhaps cattle were crossing the tracks. But many minutes passed, with no restart. He liked to think of himself as a patient person, yet this additional delay in getting to Oneida made him extremely nervous. Often he enjoyed times when there was nothing he could do, so he was free to meditate on whatever puzzle he was seeking to solve. Yet he had no information to cogitate about, not having learned any facts that would constitute pieces of the puzzle. In the back of his mind a very difficult puzzle had long nagged at him, more urgent but no more clear with the passing years. It concerned not murder, which ends a life violently, but the meaning of a life that will soon end naturally. The name of the puzzle was his own: Amasa Blodgett.

Eventually, after what seemed like ages, the train began to move. He looked out the window, this way and that, seeking a clue to explain the delay, such as a repair wagon, but no clue was to be found. The train halted at many stations, and at each one Amasa thought about a different trespass he had investigated during his long career as the commune detective.

The sun was setting as the train slowed to a halt near Oneida, so Amasa wondered if it was too late to find a wagon driver to take him the last couple of miles to his destination. He was struggling with his carpet bags, when suddenly the young man with the curly hair appeared, seized them both, and said, “Follow me.”

“Halt, sir!” Amasa exclaimed, briefly thinking that this was a robbery attempt. But the man seemed calm, and was apparently trying to help an old man. “What are you doing? Or, I see what you are doing, but why and who are you?”

“Taking you to our community,” the man muttered. “John Cragin is my name, and I am the community’s chief accountant, currently assigned to account for all the details in our response to the insidious attack being carried out against us. You, sir, are one of those details, so I have been detailed to oversee your delivery to Oneida. This way, sir, to our Whitechapel.” John led the way behind the shack beside the railway, while Amasa pondered what the young man could possibly be talking about. A chapel that has been whitewashed? He recalled that the famous Liberty Bell had been made in London’s Whitechapel Bell Foundry, and wondered if this could be the name of a town adjoining Oneida. His mind drifted to the fact that the bigger towns around took their names from ancient civilizations, such as Syracuse, Utica, and even Rome, not from jolly old England. Then he realized that his mind had, once again, wandered off in the wrong direction.

There stood a two-wheeled Whitechapel cart, lacking the necessary horse to pull it, and leaning forward on its shafts. Amasa shuddered, asking himself how a wainwright could possibly have forgotten one of the most popular fancy carts of his era. Perhaps he was mentally aging, after all. John put the traveler’s carpet bags in the storage space behind the seat, motioned to suggest that Amasa should get into the cart, and walked away. Given the forward tilt caused by the fact that the cart’s shafts were resting on the ground, rather than lifted by the harness on a horse, it was uncomfortable to sit in the seat, but he made the best of his situation. Within a few minutes, John returned, leading a riding horse by its bridle, in the company of a young woman leading a horse that looked rather better suited to pull the Whitechapel.

“Good evening,” the young lady said. “I am Lillian Bailey, but prefer to be called just Lillie. I am Mr. Cragin’s bookkeeper assistant, and will be introducing you to the community tomorrow. Mr. Cragin had telegraphed us from Cleveland that you were coming, so we have been able to make all the arrangements.” In hardly more than a minute, the Whitechapel had been attached to its draft animal, Lillie had taken her place beside Amasa, and John had mounted the other steed. Lillie flicked the reins, and off they trotted.

As the sky darkened, Lillie chatted incessantly, first explaining how bookkeeping differed from accounting, a distinction that escaped her listener even after it had been painstakingly explained to him. She incidentally revealed that she was eighteen years old, a dozen years younger than John. She gave every sign of being fond of him, but stressed the business side of their relationship, and then somehow drifted off into a peroration on how important it was for everyone at Oneida to love all other members equally. How that related to the community’s financial system became clear as she explained that all property was held communally. Finally Amasa felt that Lillie’s self-introduction was over, so it was proper for him to ask about the dangers the Oneida Community was facing.

“Oh,” Lillie began, “so many terrible things have happened! Let me tell you about one that affected our business with the outside world.” She went on to explain that the day after Independence Day, around nine in the evening, everyone was gathered in an Association meeting. “We were discussing individual inspiration, how each Perfectionist could find divine guidance within her or his soul. We all resolved over the next week to follow Romans 15, which begins, ‘Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers!’ At that very instant, we were startled by a cry of alarm outside, and after a brief rush, we went in good order to see what was happening. The building housing our store, the shoe workshop, and the printing press was aflame!”

Lillie then described the frantic scene to Amasa in remarkably well-organized detail. The fire was initially limited to the roof, so members of the community set up a bucket brigade to bring water from the well. Within a few minutes it was clear that they could not put out the flames this way, because they were so high and the water supply was meager, so they switched to carrying out all the goods, furniture, and most of the machinery from the building, including even a few windows and doors. In this they succeeded remarkably well, and Lillie catalogued the salvage and the scene, complete with a solemn moon and fleecy clouds, over the three hours until the blaze extinguished itself. “We realized that the fire was like a divinely ordained sacrifice, coming down from above, to the foundation of the building that served as the altar.”

She seemed ready to go off on a theological tangent, interpreting God’s meaning, when Amasa asked her what evidence there was that it might have been human arson, perhaps aimed at destroying the community’s printing operation, which flooded the nation with radical tracts. “At first that idea did not occur to us,” she replied. “We spoke of the incident as a conservative fire, destroying none of our goods and not our hearts but only a superficial exterior, while teaching us a lesson about obedience to the will of God. But recently we have begun to wonder about the possibility you suggest.”

“I shall need to examine the ruins, tomorrow at first light,” Amasa exclaimed. “Sometimes even a pile of ashes contains clues.” Only then did Lillie explain that the fire had occurred way back in 1851, years before she had been born, and there was nothing left for him to examine. It was one of several early possible attacks on the community that were being discussed now that Father Noyes had warned they were in grave danger. Amasa found himself speechless, wondering how he could possibly determine the truth today in a community obsessed with myths about yesterday. Perhaps sensing that Amasa and Lillie were suffering an awkward moment, John Cragin decided to improve the mood with one of Oneida’s special songs:

“I love you, O my sister, But the love of God is better; Yes, the love of God is better — O the love of God is best.”

In the distance could be seen a huge hotel-like building, lights in its windows, the Mansion House that dominated the commune’s landscape, on a slight rise, surrounded by lawns and a few decorative trees. In a clear and joyous voice, Lillie contributed the second verse:

“I love you, O my brother, But the love of God is better; Yes, the love of God is better — O the love of God is best.”

Despite the fatigue of travel that weighed heavily upon him, Amasa contemplated the first two Oneidans he had met, as they sang together:

“Yes, the love of God is better, O the love of God is better; Hallelujah, Hallelujah — Yes, the love of God is best.”

This pair seemed far too sweet to be murder suspects, yet what was their personal relationship, and how could any private relationship between a woman and a man survive in a community where all women were married to all men? From his years among the Shakers, he knew that celibacy was one solution for this problem, but Oneidans were not celibate. His thoughts ended inconclusively as the Whitechapel arrived at the main entrance to the huge Mansion House, where already many of the Perfectionists had retired for the night.

Cragin offered Amasa some bread, a flask of water, and directions for the facilities he might need before dawn. Then he gave the visitor a lighted candle and showed him the way to a small bedroom on the third floor. Amasa did not bother to unpack, nor to make use of the refreshments, but undressed and climbed under the thin summer blanket. Often, when he first arrived at a commune to solve a puzzle, his mind raced and delayed sleep, but that did not happen now. Not even a dream disturbed him before dawn.


	2. Apparent Perfection

Amasa Blodgett awoke to the sound of many voices, then a knock at the door of the small bedroom that had been provided to him. It was John Cragin, who helped him get ready for a busy day, and then took him downstairs to an elegant, two-story place in the Mansion House called the Upstairs Sitting Room. Not only was the furniture quite elegant, but there were balconies way up above his head, leading to small bedrooms, including the one he had spent the night. A knock at the door announced the arrival of an elderly lady whom John introduced as Harriet Holton Noyes, the wife of Oneida’s leader.

“I bring greetings from my husband, and regrets he may not be able to meet with you today, Mr. Blodgett, because of other duties. We hope that your visit will not only help us discover the source of our current troubles, but also assist you on your journey toward perfection.” She squinted a bit as she spoke, and trembled slightly as she held Amasa’s hand. He thanked her for her welcome and expressed hope that her own health was good.

“I was formerly very impressible to evil influences; now my spirit is open to good.” She released his hand, and made a gesture as if praying. “For years I had an evil eye, that looked on the dark side of every thing, and transformed good into evil. But when our community formed, I learned to gather good from my circumstances and the evils which surround me. I am not discouraged, as formerly, when my faults are presented to me, but am willing to learn by my mistakes. I hope the same for you, and even for the evil ones who seek to do us harm, once, of course, they have been fully punished.” Giving him no chance to reply, she turned and left the room.

Soon, Lillian Bailey arrived with corn fritters, fruits, and of all things, strawberry leaf tea. Amasa was extremely grateful for this early feast, but he did get the impression that he was being kept away from the community members in general, who were having a collective breakfast elsewhere in the building. After some pleasantries and much munching, he began a serious conversation.

“Yesterday,” Amasa began, “Lillie was kind enough to begin to inform me about the historical background of your current dangers. What, may I ask, has actually happened recently that gives you reason to believe that your leader’s life is in danger?”

“Oh,” Lillie began, “the death of George Noyes, our leader’s brother, and the drowning of the two ladies...” With a sharp but graceful gesture John silenced her.

“There will be time to discuss many things,” he said calmly, “but you should understand that we Perfectionists are much more aware than ordinary people of the connections between the past, the present, and the future. In a way, we live in a timeless realm, since the Second Coming of Christ.”

“Really?” Amasa thought better of the slightly irritated tone with which he had spoken that word, and struggled to find a way to soothe the mood while gaining scraps of solid information. “Do you mean since 1844, when William Miller and many others believed the Second Advent had been scheduled?”

“Certainly not,” snipped John, “because that was an erroneous calculation by a well-meaning but deluded man who had never gotten over the shock he experienced in the Battle of Plattsburgh, thirty years earlier, when a British artillery shell had landed not more than two feet from him. No, Christ’s return is described several places in the New Testament, and thus more than eighteen centuries ago. The people of that era looked around them, saw rampant imperfection, and wrongly assumed Christ’s return was destined to occur in their future. Had they properly understood his teachings, they would have realized they already had all the divine gifts required to achieve perfection, as we here now at Oneida have proven.”

“Ah, I see.” Trying to conceal his mixture of confusion and irritation, Amasa gestured for John to continue.

“Another historical tragedy we suffered will show you how our past thrives within our present, the downing which Lillie mentioned. We refer to the mysterious death of my own mother, Mary Cragin, in 1851.” Amasa did his best to combine sympathy with inquiry in his facial expression, and John continued. “The community had acquired a sloop, named the Rebecca Ford, for a shipping business we started, delivering limestone from Kingston to Brooklyn, for making cement. Occasionally the leading members of the community would go along, because from time to time we had activities in New York City. In July of that year my mother, another woman named Eliza Allen, and a couple of the men rode the Rebecca Ford down the Hudson. A terrible storm arose, and all except the pilot battened themselves down in the cabin, when a powerful gust of wind caused the boat to capsize. The men escaped, but the two women downed.”

“Oh how terrible!” Amasa exclaimed. “What an unfortunate accident.”

John seemed to ponder for a moment. “Accident? Perhaps. But even random events have meanings, and we cannot be sure whether the pilot’s competence was momentarily compromised by some evil influence. In any case, the connection to the present day is the fact that my older brother, George Cragin, has been communicating with our mother, seeking her perspective from the Beyond on whether perhaps the conspiracy against us, organized by wicked men like Professor Mears, has resorted to violent means, not merely today but in the past as well.”

Amasa nodded. He surmised that John’s brother might be using mediumistic methods to communicate with the spirit of their deceased mother, but after his error in mentioning William Miller, he did not want to guess. John continued, “Many of us actually tried to communicate with her in the days immediately after her death. In the nearby town of Rochester, we knew there had been several episodes of séances and spirit rapping, so there was general interest among us in the experiments by other communities with spiritualism. However, Father Noyes discouraged this speculation, warning that we were in danger of adopting fanatical ideas, and urging sobriety.”

At this point, Lillie contributed a woman’s viewpoint. “This was the point in our history when Father Noyes first revealed the relationship of Heaven to Hell. There are two fellowships, a stronger one, associated with men, is Ascending to Heaven. Descending to Hell is weaker and associated with women. But it is wrong to believe that our women’s way is evil. Rather, the two can be conjoined for the purpose of resurrection, if leadership is given to the Ascending male principle, under Christ, who, after all, is male. Recently, indeed, the two paths are coming together, and Father Noyes has enthusiastically encouraged exploration of spiritualism as a force opposed to the crass materialism of the surrounding world.”

“That is where my brother comes it,” John interjected. George is one of two Yale-trained doctors in the community, the other being a son of Father Noyes, Theodore. There has been, shall we say, a dialogue between father and son, and for a time it appeared that the son would leave the community as a consequence of loss of faith, or lead it in a new and ill-fated direction. These are complex issues, and you must reserve judgment until you know more. But Theodore enthusiastically accepted a mission for Father Noyes to explore all aspects of spiritualism. He has visited many spirit mediums outside, then trained some of us to commune with spirits, holding séances here at the community. The medical benefits of spiritualism seem assured, so my brother has trained himself in all the necessary methods, read spiritualist books, and had some success communicating beyond the grave.”

Sensing that the conversation had entered hazardous territory, Amasa sought a way to slow down the torrent of wild ideas, both so he could contemplate what John and Lillie were saying, and to avoid hurtling over some rhetorical cliff. “You say that both George Cragin and Theodore Noyes were educated at Yale College, in New Haven, Connecticut?”

“Oh, yes,” John replied, “ and so was I. The first Yale graduate in the community was Father Noyes himself. My brother completed his studies at Yale’s medical school in 1867, and I attended Sheffield Scientific school at Yale for the academic year, 1867-1868. By all accounts, Oneida is the most highly educated of all America’s religious communities, and for decades we have been publishing books and periodicals of the highest intellectual order. Later, we shall take you to our library, because we have many written records that relate to our current challenge, including some of the threatening writing by Professor Mears. But let me explain further why my brother’s communion with our mother really does connect the past with the present, whatever you may personally think about spiritualism.”

John paused in thought, slowly raised both hands before his face, then thrust them forward when he began to speak excitedly. “Consider two possibilities. First, Mears and others outside the community have attacked it for many years, going back to the very beginning in Vermont. That is one reason we moved here into upstate New York, to get away from our earliest critics, while maintaining connections with Yale and also with New York City because we often use it as a base from which to spread our ideas across the world. We did not, you will notice, flee to Utah like the Latter-Day Saints! So, plausibly, in their growing frustration as we survived verbal attacks year after year, our enemies may have combined in a conspiracy against us, sometimes sending agents slyly into our midst to carry out acts of sabotage like the fire Lillie described or the capsizing of the Rebecca Ford − fire and water, how apt! And now, perhaps they have begun a new campaign to defeat us. That is where you come in, Mr. Blodgett. You are well known as a defender of America’s progressive communities against many kinds of mundane attack.

“The other possibility is being addressed by George and Theodore, a far less mundane attack from supernatural forces of darkness. If it turns out that Evil’s agents here on Earth are women, then we will know that the real enemy is the Descent to Hell faction of the spirit world. If those agents are not women, or indeed if they are not human at all, then we will know we face a new danger, and Father Noyes will need to develop a new doctrine that not only will defeat the supernatural enemy but provide us an even better path to absolute perfection.”

Perhaps sensing that Amasa had received quite enough of a lecture, Lillie cleared away the breakfast dishes, then led the two men to Oneida’s majestic library. She explained that on any given day, two or three of the community members who edited publications could be found working there, but that today the place would be Amasa’s private office, where he could read through many documents about the attacks from Mears of nearby Hamilton College. She gave him some blank pages and a handful of the new Faber-Castell pencils, which reminded Amasa that one of the more intriguing recent legal disputes involved the invalidation of a patent for attaching rubber erasers, and each of these pencils had a nice sharp point at one end, and an eraser at the other. Preferring pens, Amasa did not like to erase, because his second thoughts were often followed by third thoughts that resembled his first thoughts, so he liked to keep a record of all his ideas even after he had abandoned them.

As John and Lillie left the library, she mentioned she would be bringing him lunch around noon, so he had nothing to worry about other than reading the records and drawing conclusions. The first challenge was a scrapbook of news articles and handwritten, dated notes referring to events, organized chronologically. Although he respected careful organization of information, he flipped through the scrapbook and started with a striking news item from January of that very year. Professor John Mears of Hamilton College had organized a protest meeting against the Oneida Community, held at nearby Syracuse University, attended by forty-seven clergymen. Ironically, Mears had tried to keep the meeting private, and the local newspapers complained they had been excluded, which led to even greater publicity than had the gathering been open to the press and public.

Turning the page in the scrapbook, Amasa found a cartoon cut out of _Puck_ magazine, depicting ridiculous-looking clergymen pointing at the Oneida Community and exclaiming, “Oh, dreadful! They dwell in peace and harmony, and have no church scandals. They must be wiped out!” Turning back toward the beginning of the scrapbook, he saw that Mears had been attacking the Perfectionists since at least as early as 1873. For about an hour, he scribbled notes and pondered the controversy, then set the scrapbook aside to read some of the essays that revealed the inner thoughts of Professor Mears.

The cartoon came back to mind as he read an article Mears had published in March, in the annual report of the New York state university system, “Treatment of College Disorders,” which concerned student pranks and athletic rowdyism on campus. Its first words set the tone: “An evil so deeply seated, so inwrought with traditions of college life, cannot be extirpated by violent or repressive measures only. It must be _managed_ − no less than denounced. It seems hardly likely that it will ever be suddenly and totally abolished in any institution, or in the colleges of the country collectively; but every wise and faithful effort should be made to this end.” If Mears considered Oneida to be a prank within Christianity, then perhaps he understood that there would always be a degree of rowdyism within any living religious tradition. His emphasis on managing an inescapable evil within academia could explain why he persisted for years in agitating against Oneida, rather than becoming quickly discouraged, and surrendering. At what point did this Doctor of Divinity believe it was proper to resort to violent measures?

Next he scanned an 1873 article from _The Presbyterian Quarterly_ , by some Frenchman, which Mears had translated into English, about the General Synod of Protestants of that year that had reestablished the legality of Protestant churches in France after more than two centuries of suppression. So, if Mears thought Protestantism should have equal rights with Catholicism, shouldn’t he also think that Perfectionism should have equal rights with both?

The next item in the pile was also an issue of _The Presbyterian Quarterly_ , but two years earlier, bookmarked at an article in which Mears used his own sonorous words to decry the conflict between science and spirituality. With some difficulty Amasa plowed through the abstract prose, which at one point debated morality on the planet Mercury, until at the very end, as he felt himself getting drowsy, the last paragraph reawakened his interest: “Who here loves his country, and would stay it on its downward career of luxurious materialism, and godless utilitarian science, and gross, unthinking, self-aggrandizing, partisan politics; who would save our great cities from the practical atheism and dominant dissipation and organized violence that, like volcano fires, swell and rage in pent-up wrath until they burst forth with a convulsion that startles the world?” Long-winded and bombastic were the words of Mears, but his fundamental sentiments seemed admirable.

Just then, Lillie brought him lunch, consisting of a perfect omelet without the slightest hint of burning, two pieces of Graham bread, and a tart filled with currant jelly. She departed immediately, supposing he would read while he ate, but instead he gazed out the window. Almost constantly one member of the community or another was walking across the lawn, some simply coming to and from the common mid-day meal, and others obviously rushing about on one assignment or another.

When the last crumb of the tart had disappeared, he began to read an article by Mears about Herbert Spencer, who seemed a foe of faith: “If the truth must have opponents, it is just such opponents we prefer to see and to meet − frank, out-spoken, unreserved.” But from that point the text became drab, and Amasa had difficulty understanding who exactly this Spencer was, aside from the fact he apparently had written some weighty books. After a while, the erudite pages of Professor Mears’ treatise grew unbearably tedious, and Amasa could no longer sustain the impression that he was reading the words of a murderer. 

He had learned much already this day, and he decided it was time for some mild exercise and a chance to reflect upon his first impressions of Oneida. Using one of the community’s advertising leaflets as a bookmark, he left the stack of publications on the table, and headed outdoors for a walk.

He began by walking entirely around the Mansion House, admiring its great size and elegant style. It was really a complex cluster of very solid red brick buildings, the most massive sections three stories high, but towers or turrets taller still. A driveway curved in from one side, a wide lawn on another, a moderate slope downward on another, a quadrangle framed by major portions of this very complex structure. He had seen Yale College once, back in Connecticut, and wondered if Noyes had been inspired by the architecture of his alma mater. Anyway, in appearance Oneida could have been a high-class college rather than a communist experiment.

A hundred yards up one of the many paths that crisscrossed Oneida’s territory, he encountered a boy, sitting on a log, beating a large stone with a smaller one. The young fellow was so intent with his work that he did not immediately notice the old man standing beside him. “Excuse me, son, but may I ask what you are doing?”

The boy did not miss a beat in his pounding. “Making something.”

“I see,” said Amasa. “And what might it be that you are making?”

Now the boy looked up, noticed that Amasa was a stranger, and stopped pounding. Slight shyness in his expression and hesitation in his voice suggested he was wary of outsiders. “Well, sir, this is a ring.” He gestured at a bent piece of wire, slightly flattened, that was resting on the larger stone and had apparently been the target of his pounding. “See? I coiled up this here bailing wire, with the two ends sticking out, and I’m making the coil part nice and pretty. After that, I’ll bend the ends around a stick and I’ll have a fine ring for my sweetheart.”

“Oh, marvelous!” Amasa exclaimed. “I am sure she will appreciate it. And what is your sweetheart’s name, if I may ask?” With a frown the boy admitted he didn’t yet have a sweetheart but hoped the ring would help him get one. Further questioning revealed that the boy was uncertain what a sweetheart was, exactly, although he was sure it was some kind of lady. Politely pretending the lad’s answers had been satisfactory, Amasa asked, “And where did you learn about sweethearts and rings and such?”

“Well, sir, from one of the hired men. He showed me a ring he had gotten for his own sweetheart.”

“I see. And how do you suppose he got that ring, son? Did he buy it, or steal it, or inherit it from his sainted grandmother?”

The boy looked utterly perplexed at this query, yet he seemed a clever sort of lad, so Amasa continued his interrogation in hopes that from a child he might learn interesting aspects of the Oneida mind. “Don’t worry about that. Perhaps you could tell me more about this hired man. Are there many hired men here?”

“Many, sir, maybe a hundred, but we don’t see much of them, except George Ayres, the hired hosteller. He’s different, ‘cause we play with his boy Georgie, sometimes.”

“Hmmm.” It occurred to Amasa that these hired men served as a bridge between Oneida and the surrounding world, across which hostilities might travel, as well as secrets. If Professor Mears really was behind the attempts on Noyes’s life, it seemed likely he had an accomplice who had access to the community. A member of the community could go anywhere inside Oneida at any time, but would have had little opportunity to develop a relationship with Mears. A hired man, in contrast, presumably lived in both worlds, having some access to many parts of Oneida plus the chance to get recruited by Mears while outside the community. Further questioning of the boy allowed Amasa to deduce that the hired men were chiefly paid to do farm labor, but some did simple carpentry for the community or were teamsters, or worked in the animal trap factory. “Now, I myself am not a member of the community. Do you suppose that I am one of these hired men?”

“No, sir,” the boy replied confidently. “You are an outsider.”

“Marvelous! And how do you know that? How do hired men differ from outsiders?”

Again the boy hesitated, and for a moment Amasa was concerned that the boy was too embarrassed to answer because he did not want to say Amasa was too old to be a hired man. But as the silence lengthened is seemed that the boy was genuinely mystified by the question, as if he did not know what it meant to be hired. Amasa stood patiently, a slight smile on his lips, waiting for an answer. Finally, the boy said, “Maybe the difference is that the hired men spit brown, but outsiders spit white.”

For an instant Amasa did not understand. Then he laughed heartily and said, “Oh, that’s because the sort of men who drive mules or plough fields often chew tobacco, whereas invited visitors like myself are on our good behavior and avoid the chaw. All men spit, of course, although I hear that the refined classes of Boston and Philadelphia now disdain the practice. Do you know what tobacco is, son?”

“I’ve heard of it, but I can’t really say I know what it’s for.”

“And a good thing it is that you do not! Too many young men smoke or chew, and those filthy habits stunt their growth.” Amasa visualized with disgust the spittoons in the Cleveland railway station, circled by rude men who punctuated their conversation with the ring of spitting into those foul, brass pots. That reminded Amasa of the penny he had placed in his waistcoat pocket in case he needed a baggage porter at the Oneida station. He drew it out and offered it to the boy. “Do you know what that is, son?”

Turning it over and over in his fingers, the lad responded, “Yes I do. It’s an Indian. You can tell he’s an Indian because he’s wearing a feather hat. And this number, here, 1870, that’s a date, I expect. I guess it’s lucky, because that’s when I was born.”

“Well, son, of course that’s a picture of an Indian. But the thing itself is a penny. Do you know what a penny is, my boy?”

“Oh, I’ve heard about pennies and such, although I’ve never seen one before. It’s what they call money,” the boy answered, proud of what he fancied was great knowledge on the obscure topic of coinage. Then his eyes widened. “So this must be an Indian penny. Did you get it from the wild Indians? Oh, it would be exciting to see a real Indian! Well, I mean other than the Oneida tribe, which are our friends and don’t seem wild at all.”

Amasa laughed uproariously. “What a clever fellow you are! Oh, I’ve seen many, many Indians, and I lived among them for a while. But this isn’t Indian money, just an ordinary American penny, like all others, with a picture of an Indian on it. I do suppose you are right that it is incongruous for the United States to put the picture of an Indian on its pennies. Not long ago the post office starting printing stamps with Mr. Lincoln’s picture on them, and I think it would be a grand idea to replace this Indian on the penny with Mr. Lincoln’s face, although a ten-dollar gold piece might be more fitting. Do you know who Mr. Lincoln was, son?”

“Yes, indeed. You must mean Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth president of the United States.” Amasa was then treated to a recitation of the names of the presidents, from Washington all the way up to Hayes. He decided not to tell the boy that all nineteen had served during his own lifetime, and he did not admit that hearing this long list made him exceedingly weary.

“Very good, son. The school here has educated you very well. Do you know what Mr. Lincoln accomplished?”

“Yes, sir. He kept the Union together and he freed the slaves. George Ayres was a slave, but his boy Georgie is growing up to be a free man. Slaves are people from Africa who were treated horribly by their masters. They wanted to run away, but the masters would catch them and beat them.”

“Just so. It was a great thing Mr. Lincoln did to emancipate the slaves.” Amasa decided not to mention the alternative viewpoint, that the Irish immigrants drafted against their will into the Union Army were really Lincoln’s own slaves. “Aside from the beating part, do you know what a slave is? That is, do you know how a slave differs from a hired man with respect to their wages?” Seeing that the boy was again perplexed, Amasa decided to treat his questions as rhetorical. “Both slaves and hired men have to work, but only hired men get money for their labors. They can then spend their money for whatever they want, such as a ring for a sweetheart. Now, suppose that I were a hired man. I did some work here for Oneida, and your community gave me this penny as my wages. You are operating a jewelry manufacture, and I come to you seeking a ring for my sweetheart. I ask you how much that fine ring costs, and you say one penny. So I give you this penny, and you give me the ring.”

“But I don’t want to give you the ring, sir. I’m making it for my own sweetheart.”

“Yes, yes. But perhaps you could make a second ring for me, which I will buy from you for a penny.”

“Oh, good idea. Yes, I would like that penny! The picture of the Indian in the feather hat is grand. Here, let me finish this ring for you, sir, and I’ll make another one for my sweetheart later. I have lots of bailing wire.” The boy hammered away for a minute, inspected the nicely flattened coil, bent the two ends of the wire around a stick, and presented Amasa with a child’s notion of what a ring should be. 

“Excellent.” Amasa took out his reading spectacles and made a show of admiring the newly made piece of jewelry. “With this ring I am sure I can get a sweetheart, just as you will with the ring you make for yourself. Now, you see, you have just sold me this ring, and I have bought it from you. I gave you money, and you gave me the ring. Does that help you see what money is, son?”

“Yes, sir, it sure does. And it was very kind of you to explain it to me. I guess us Oneida boys don’t really know much about the outside world.”

“Hmmm.” Amasa wondered if there was anything the boy knew that bore on the attempted assassinations. “Perhaps you could explain something to me. Are outsiders generally good people, or are some of them bad?”

“Many of them are very bad, because they are not Perfectionists as we are. But you seem to be a good gentlemen, sir.” Amasa nodded at this tribute. “Some are very bad. In school we have learned about very wicked outside men in the government, like Boss Tweed and Samuel Tilden.” That now-familiar perplexed expression returned to the boy’s face. “And we’ve been hearing a lot of late about Professor Mears of Hamilton College. I don’t rightly understand it, but our parents get prayerful when they talk about it. Mears is attacking us with a crusade of the clergy. I don’t know what a crusade is, exactly, but clergy are dry old men who live in Syracuse. We never go there, but Syracuse is over past West Hill somewhere. Mears crouches over on the other side, past the eastern hills. 

“Nobody’s ever seen him, but us boys know what he looks like. He is a very grim man, with broad shoulders and a large head. His face, we think, is all blotchy, red and pink with scabs on it. He has a huge nose and a long, white beard that whips up and down when he shouts, which is all the time. Sometimes we see a newspaper that has had something cut out of it, and we know our parents took out something Mears wrote so it wouldn’t frighten us.”

Amasa was startled to hear that already Mears had become the monster of the children’s nightmares. Sensing that it was time to let the boy begin work on his sweetheart’s ring, Amasa turned to go, then realized he did not know the boy’s name. “I must continue my walk, young fellow, but this has been a pleasant conversation. Better late than never, let me introduce myself. I am Amasa Blodgett, and I live at the Zoar commune in Ohio, not very different from Oneida, actually. We don’t use money there, either, except with outsiders.” 

“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Blodgett. My name is Pierrepont Noyes. Grownups call me Pip.”

“Is John Humphrey Noyes your father?”

“Yes, and my mother’s name is Harriet.”

“Ah, I have met Mrs. Noyes. She’s a fine lady.” Amasa wondered how such a young lad could be the son of an elderly woman.

“No, not Harriet Noyes. My mother is Harriet Worden. I’m one of Father Noyes’s stirps.”

“Stirrups?” Now Amasa wondered how they had gotten on the topic of horseback riding.

“No, stirps. S-T-I-R-P-S. One of his perfection children.” Pierrepont smiled at Amasa in all innocence, apparently unaware that he had just said some very strange things. 

Slightly dizzy from all the fresh impressions that had tumbled into his brain, Amasa waved and resumed his slow amble down the path. Soon he found that his steps had returned him to the library, where he looked through the remaining pile of publications and clippings, noting which ones he needed to study later on. Feeling rather tired, he wrote a brief note and left it on the table, explaining he could be found in his bedroom in the Mansion House. Taking his notes and a fistful of pencils, he went there for a nap. It seemed he had just closed his eyes, when John Cragin roused him for dinner. Now he hoped to meet John Humphrey Noyes, in more ways than one the father of the community.

Two dozen large round tables filled the huge dining room, and around each one a dozen men and women stood behind their chairs, apparently waiting for a signal to sit. Lillie introduced Amasa to the community members at his own table, one of whom, Harriet Noyes, he had already met. Aside from Amasa himself, the oldest man at the table was Sewell Newhouse, director of the trap-making factory, who looked about seventy years of age. Unlike most of the other men, he was clean shaven, and carefully parted his hair on the left side, rather than letting it roam freely. Harriet Noyes, standing on Amasa’s immediate left, seemed as old as Sewell. Erastus Hamilton, community architect, was perhaps in his mid fifties. George Cragin senior, chain maker and father of John Cragin, seemed between Newhouse and Hamilton in age. Four attractive ladies alternated with the men in standing behind chairs: Jessie Baker, Marion Burnham, Emily Easton, and on Amasa’s right was Harriet Worden. Amasa immediately forgot the names of the first three, realizing that two of the woman at this table had borne children to John Humphrey Noyes, and shared the name Harriet. He pondered the fact that each of them might harbor resentments strong enough to threaten the community’s leader.

There was an empty seat beside Harriett Noyes, so when a tall bearded man walked to it, Amasa assumed it was Oneida’s leader. But she introduced him as her eldest son, Dr. Theodore Noyes. On close inspection, Theodore was far too young to be mistaken for his father, but seemed considerably younger than the first-born son of his mother. Her perpetual frown and the worry lines on her forehead may have made her seem older than she was.

Someone at the other end of the room stuck a little bell. The Oneidans immediately fell silent and stood with bowed heads. Theodore rocked slightly from side to side, as if planting his feet firmly on the floor, then stood with hands folded and his face lifted upward. “God is great and God is good, and we thank Him for this food. By His hand must all be fed. Give us, Lord, our daily bread. Amen.” 

Swiftly, the throng seated itself, so Amasa followed suit, but Theodore remained standing. “Brothers and sisters, I have a brief announcement to make. We have with us today, Mr. Amasa Blodgett from the Zoar community in Ohio. He has come to help us with the safety problem we have been facing recently, and he has achieved great success with similar problems that have beset other communities in the past.

“Over the next several days, he will be investigating the possible sources of our problem, and I hope you will all help him in any way you can. He has my father’s complete confidence. Tomorrow we plan to give Mr. Blodgett a tour of our traditional manufacturing enterprises, the trap factory and the silk works. The day after tomorrow, we will examine our experiments with possible new enterprises, which as you know chiefly concern our plan to manufacture silverware. He will see our attempts at silver plating in the chemical laboratory and the casting of solid silver objects at the forge. Other days he will see how we raise our children and learn how our community functions as a great, harmonious family. Most importantly, each day he will gain greater insights into our religious faith. Naturally, I will leave him considerable time each day to carry out his own observations. I give you, Mr. Amasa Blodgett.”

Amasa stood and gave a modest bow, to the polite applause of the Oneidans, but there seemed no expectation that he would speak, so he sat immediately back down and joined the others in attacking the food spread out before them. He was about to reach for a water pitcher that was sitting in front of him, when suddenly it shifted a few inches to the left. The instant he registered his surprise, Newhouse exclaimed from across the table, “Oh, I am so sorry! I forgot for a moment that guests are not familiar with our tables. Look how it works.” He pointed to the center. “The table is like an archery target, but the bull’s eye turns so we can reach anything we need without asking anyone to pass it. The outer ring, on which our individual plates and cutlery sit, stands still. Please, try it.” Amasa pressed his hand on the part of the table Newhouse had called the bull’s eye, and easily turned it back so he could reach the water pitcher. He filled his glass, replaced the pitcher, and watched as Newhouse lifted his hand in the air, then reached down and turned the inner part of the table until he could reach a bowl of vegetables, from which he took a serving. “You may have noticed I waved my hand slightly in the air, which is our signal we are about to turn the inner part of the table.”

The table was well supplied with vegetables, fruits, and bread, but there was no meat. Amasa tried to think of a polite way of asking whether Oneida were vegetarian, without seeming to complain at the lack of meat. “Oh this dinner is splendid,” he exclaimed. “At Zoar we chiefly eat German stew, in which the vegetables have dissolved. But your vegetables are so crisp and fresh, with such delightful flavors, it is a great pleasure to take supper with you. At Zoar we try to observe many of the regulations in _Leviticus_ , for example abstaining from ham and pork. Do you follow similar biblical rules here at Oneida?”

Theodore turned toward Amasa, put down his fork, chewed for a moment, took a sip of water, then spoke “ _Leviticus_ , in verse eight of chapter eleven, says, ‘Of their flesh shall ye not eat, and their carcass shall ye touch; they are unclean to you.’ But this concerns not swine alone, but also rabbits, and I would think your Zoarite Germans would be reluctant to give up their hasenpfeffer. Actually, I believe that most of the injunctions listed in _Leviticus_ were intended only for the ancient Hebrews and have no force with modern Christians. Notice the ‘ye’ and ‘you’ in the verse I just quoted. The flesh and carcass are not unclean to everybody but only to the people addressed, namely the Hebrews. 

“This is an important point, because of a theological debate currently in progress at the best seminaries. There are two ways we may understand the ancient laws. First, they tell us what God wishes, which acts we are supposed to consider holy and which sacrilegious. God may ordain any arbitrary ritual he wishes as a test for us, for example circumcising the foreskin of a male child on the eighth day, which is also required by _Leviticus_. Second, they may be practical rules which prevent disease or otherwise serve our material benefit. In that case biblical rules merely sanctify the practical wisdom of ancient peoples, and since modern science is superior to antique folk knowledge, we can examine each of the ancient customs to determine which should be abandoned.

“The very latest medical opinion holds that the terrible disease trichinosis is transmitted through the flesh of contaminated pigs, so it is conceivable that the Hebrews developed a custom of avoiding pigs to protect themselves. Because trichinosis, thankfully, is rare, they would have been tempted to take a chance and eat pork occasionally. Transforming their hygienic custom into a religious edict may have been the only way of enforcing it strictly. However, the connection between contaminated pork and trichinosis was not known earlier in this century, and there is no evidence it was known to the ancient Hebrews. Certainly the Chinese have an ancient civilization, yet they eat pork in abundance. Today we know that thorough cooking protects somehow against the disease, so if _Leviticus_ had been merely a hygienic book it should have said, ‘Thou shalt cook thy pork thoroughly, verily unto the seventh hour.’ But it does not say that. Thus, I think we cannot be certain why the scriptures prohibited the eating of pork and ham, but we can be fairly confident that the regulation does not apply to us.”

Amasa wondered how Theodore would apply a similar logic to other parts of the bible. Some of the most prestigious theology schools had been teaching critical analysis that bordered on skepticism, and perhaps Theodore had learned a measure of agnosticism at Yale. He admired doubt in a man of action, but knew it was a dangerous vice among clergy. Theodore was droning on about various obscure passages in _Leviticus_ , such as why turtles were equivalent to pigeons when making a burnt offering and why the right ear and right big toe got such special attention when anointing with oil. Thankfully, the girl on the other side of Theodore diverted him from his pedantry with a question about all the kinds of leprosy described in _Leviticus_ , and Amasa could devote his attention to the rather attractive middle-aged lady to his right, Harriett Worden.

She provided him with the answer that Theodore had never gotten around to, explaining that Oneidans ate meat, but only in moderation, usually about twice a week. He mentioned he had enjoyed a long chat with her son, and not remembering the boy’s name he uttered the unflattering word “pipsqueak.”

She took it as a joke, replying, “Oh, _Pip_ is correct, but not _squeak_ , Mr. Bludgeon.” He smiled, happy she kindly accepted his error as humor, and inquired if she, too, had been born in the community. “No,” she replied. “I was nine years old, and came with my sisters and father to the community after my mother died. Mother’s name was Mary, and that is my middle name, while father’s name was Marquis de Lafayette. No, not a nobleman, nor a witticism, but an actual given name, Marquis de Lafayette Worden. You can blame his ambitious father, Major Walter Worden, who unfortunately died when father was a small boy so he has few memories of him, or his mother, Mehitable Haskins Worden.”

Sensing that this Harriet was both intelligent and even-tempered, unlike the other Harriet, he asked her what life was like for women at Oneida. She spoke about the great opportunities they had for cultural activities, beginning with the fact that she herself had been editor of the community’s newsletter, the _Circular_. “I have studied Greek, Latin, and French, although my command of the latter is imperfect, because I cannot decide whether your name is Monsieur Gourdin or Monsieur Massue, or something else. But, then, not being a warrior I am uncertain whether there really are differences of meaning among _cudgel_ , _mace_ , and _bludgeon_. For many years, we have had very active musical performances in the community, but as to whether the men and women are equal, let us just say they are in harmony. The conductors of our orchestra have all been men, but when Theodore, sitting now across from us, played the flute, I played the piccolo. Both Theodore and I were more prominent, dare I say, than the ten community members bowing on violins.”

Amasa listened with genuine fascination, as Harriet Worden recounted the intellectual adventures of being the editor of what amounted to a literary magazine, or perhaps a philosophy journal, because for many years the _Circular_ distributed essays not only by John Humphrey Noyes but also authored by other members of the community, along with commentaries about events in the world of religion, including controversial topics like phrenology, the analysis of a person’s mentality based on feeling the bumps on the skull. Occasional poetry was also included, and she recited to him one of her favorites, anonymous verses titled “Discipline,” that ended:

“Sculptor of souls! I lift to Thee Encumbered heart and hands; Spare not the chisel, set me free, However dear the bands. How blest, if all these seeming ills, Which draw my thoughts to Thee, Should only prove that Thou wilt make An angel out of me!”

“You see, Mr. Blodgett, if I may call you that, liberty is a perplexing concept. Yes, it is America’s watchword, yet if everyone swears allegiance to liberty, do we not become its slaves? To Bible Christians, such as ourselves, liberty is freedom from sin, perhaps from this brief span of life on Earth, but certainly from the selfishness that imprisons us. Discipline is a more elevated conception of liberty. To become truly free, we must submit to the divine Sculptor of souls, who frees us from the block of marble that represents our mean, selfish, longings. Here, Father Noyes serves as the hand of that Sculptor.”

After dinner, most members of the community dispersed, but a few remained together, talking and for a while listening to Harriet Worden play familiar tunes on the piano. Amasa struggled to avoid the conclusion that one of the two Harriets might be the source of the danger, but this one certainly could not. It was quite dark when he entered the bedroom that had been provided for him, and quickly he entered a dreamless sleep.


	3. Touring Utopia

At the beginning of his second full day at Oneida, Amasa went again to the upstairs sitting room for breakfast, but this time was joined by Sewell Newhouse, the trap maker, carrying an elegant leather satchel. When Amasa politely asked how the trap business was going, Newhouse quipped, “Oh, we can talk about that later, when I give you a tour of the workshops.” Amasa then tried to get Newhouse talking about Professor Mears and the threat to the community. All he got was a mumble to the effect that all would become clear in time. After those two failed attempts to start a conversation, they ate in silence. When Lillie entered to clear away the dishes, Newhouse nodded at her, and she nodded in return.

A few minutes later, Lillie returned in the company of a gaunt, elderly man with a full beard, dark and white in patches, and more hair on his chin than on his skull. Newhouse stood, made a slight bow, and with a dramatic voice, announced, “Father Noyes, I wish to introduce Mr. Amasa Blodgett, from our cousin the Zoar Community, who has offered to help us bring to a favorable conclusion the current danger.” So this was the prime Perfectionist himself!

Amasa stood, John Humphrey Noyes extended his right hand, and they rather formally greeted each other. Noyes opened his mouth to speak, then paused. After an uncomfortable delay, he spoke, but Amasa could not hear his words. Cupping his right hand behind his ear, he leaned forward, and Noyes repeated himself in a barely audible whisper: “Welcome to Oneida, sir, we are honored by your visit.” They sat on two straight chairs at the breakfast table, as close as socially permissible, when Noyes spoke again.

“Now, Blodgett, surely you are quite familiar with that glorious passage in the Book of Acts describing the communism of the early Christians.” Noyes picked up one of the ubiquitous bibles that could be found in every sitting room of the Mansion House, and quickly found the passage. “And all that believed were together, and had all things common; and sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need. And they, continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart, praising God, and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved.”

“Indeed,” the older man replied. “Second chapter, soon after verse forty. Every one of the Christian communes I have visited knows that passage and employs it to prove that its system is God-ordained. That was true at Reverend Keil’s community of Bethel, Missouri, even though the houses were owned by individual families just as at any ordinary town. Few other communes, perhaps only some of the best favored Shaker colonies, can match your level of prosperity, and I would think communism becomes more difficult as wealth grows and ambitious individuals see something to gain by rebelling against joint ownership.”

“But we own all that wealth collectively, so there is no need for any Oneidan to be envious of any other,” Noyes said haughtily.

“Are you sure of that?” Amasa paused for a moment, seeking a polite way of expressing his next thought. Not finding one, he tried to speak in an especially friendly tone. “Consider that some of your followers might be envious of the position held by you, yourself. Everyone owns Oneida’s wealth, but you decide how it is to be spent. I know you feel that God rules here, but he speaks through you. One of your less enlightened members might conclude you are the real owner and envy your immense property.”

“Blodgett! That is enough!” Noyes glowered. “You presume upon my hospitality with such implications.”

“You have summoned me here to seek the perpetrator of vile deeds. To find him, I must learn his motivations. Therefore I must discuss various painful matters with you. Please understand that I am exploring how this anonymous villain might think, rather than expressing my own thoughts.”

“Oh, yes. Pardon.” Then Noyes revealed two of the qualities that had brought him to supremacy over the Oneidans, a remarkable capacity to ingratiate and a sharp intelligence. “My dear fellow, your arrow has struck home. Precisely because I find your idea so outrageous, a villain might indeed believe it. However, if a greedy person in pursuit of great wealth killed me in order to get my property, he should find himself in great difficulty carrying it away with him. Will he put these fields in his pocket? How many of my industrious children will fit in his knapsack? No, I see no way that my murderer could profit monetarily from my death.”

“Perhaps you are right. But let us pursue this villain a little further. Who would be your executor, in case of your demise? Would anyone be in a position to convert some of the communal wealth into cash if you were not here to supervise?”

“Well, the fact is I am often away on excursions doing Oneida’s business. Sometimes I used to spend many weeks at our smaller commune in Wallingford, Connecticut, although it has now shut its doors. I have spent the better parts of some years in New York City. But the commune’s wealth did not vanish then. Management of the community’s affairs is always left in the hands of my most trusted associates. Now that my elder son, Theodore, has returned from Yale with his doctorate in theology I rather expect that he will gradually take over my position of leadership, but he will become the community’s spiritual head, not its owner. It would be extremely uncomfortable to think that one of the people personally closest to me, someone whose spiritual advancement seemed most undeniable, could be planning my murder. It is not inconceivable, but I rather think that the very clumsiness of these threats on my life suggests that their perpetrator is not someone very close to me.” 

“Perhaps,” Amasa acknowledged. “But if someone murdered you in your bed, they might have trouble escaping undetected. Which brings me to the key question: What attempts on your life have actually been made − recently, I mean, not decades ago?”

Noyes reached for the satchel Sewell Newhouse had brought. “Thank God it has not yet come to a bludgeoning or a gunshot in the night, but much more subtle warnings of coming attack.” He unbuckled the straps holding the satchel shut and took out an object wrapped in a piece of cloth, laying it beside the remains of their breakfast, and unwrapping it. There lay a large rat pelt. “Sewell was kind enough to skin the rat, and suppress the stink, but this dead animal was placed in my bed three weeks ago. Not here in the Mansion House, but in the cottage beside the lake where I often work, read my bible, and rest. By itself, of course, this rat signifies nothing. It could have crawled in, using my cot as its deathbed, or boys could have left it thoughtlessly after playing with it. Wait until you see the next item in the collection of evidence.”

Again, Noyes placed an object on the table, wrapped in a cloth, and began unwrapping. There was revealed something as beautiful as the rat skin was ugly, but equally strange: a perfectly sculptured miniature glass shoe. Noyes gestured at it as if to say that as a piece of evidence, it spoke for itself, but Amasa had not the slightest idea how this shoe could imply impending murder. “Excuse me,” he asked Noyes, “but was this also in your bed? Perhaps expressing somebody’s plan to kick you out of this life.” The moment he spoke those words he regretted them, because he did not want Noyes to realize how ridiculous these two objects seemed, as putative evidence of foul play.

“No, no, man, you do not understand.” Noyes coughed slightly, in reaction to speaking more loudly than he felt comfortable, and resumed his whispering. “This shoe is part of our commercial plan to build a series of profitable businesses. After this meeting, Sewell has offered to show you our trap factory, among the best and most profitable in the nation, and we also have both a silk works and a silver workshop. This shoe is a sample brought back by one of our people who was sent to the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia a couple of years ago, gathering ideas about a possible fourth industry, manufacturing glass artifacts, perhaps religious or historical in style.”

Noyes then launched into a detailed lecture about the shoe, incidentally telling Amasa that even the spiritual leader of the community often labored in Oneida’s industries. This particular shoe was not fabricated at Oneida, but right in the exposition, where the Gillinder family of Philadelphia had set up a workshop, making these and other decorations. It was all Amasa could do to contain his impatience as Noyes quietly explained that the shoe was five and a half inches long by two and half inches tall given its high heel, and pointed out the fine details of the bow where laces would have been on a real boot.

Placing his thumb into the shoe, where the miniature foot would have gone, Noyes held it aloft and began a peroration about how the texture of Oneida-made miniature shoes could have been clear, like this Gillinder product, or frosted, by using the sandblasting process just developed by Benjamin Chew Tilghman, also of Philadelphia. Finally, he got around to explaining the sinister story of how the shoe did indeed appear at the lakeside cottage, but sitting in the doorway rather than on the bed, and since then had been wandering all across the community. Again and again it was found, returned to the shelf of samples in the workshop, only to disappear again and be found here or there across the community. Amasa muttered something about the wandering must have been a joke by a member of Oneida, but Noyes shook the shoe in his face and stuttered, “put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground!”

Amasa contemplated that confusing logic as Noyes took his third piece of evidence from the satchel, a small scrap of paper, bearing these words: “The voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’” Noyes explained that he had found this scrap in his hymnal, just as a Sunday meeting was preparing to sing, clearly not some innocent bookmark of the previous user, but a threat aimed directly at him.

“What, Mr. Blodgett, is the very next word! Surely you must recognize this biblical quotation. Tell me, man, what is the next word?” Amasa had no idea, and after a few more attempts to make him guess, Noyes himself provided the word: “John!” He waved his hand with a gesture signifying the conclusion of an argument. “The very next word was my own name, John! ‘John did baptize in the wilderness, and preach the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins.’ Which John does the Bible mean? Why John the Baptist, and shortly Salome demanded his head be chopped off. And I, here, do baptize in the wilderness, and it is my head someone intends to chop off!”

Amasa felt quite lost, in his own mind sure that Noyes was imagining a nonexistent threat against his life, but feeling quite trapped inside the man’s fantasy and unable to escape without peril to his own dignity. Then came the fourth piece of evidence, which also was a scrap of paper, but with a somewhat longer quotation, which Noyes quoted in his whispering voice: “‘Prophet!’ said I, ‘thing of evil! − prophet still, if bird or devil! Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore, Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted − On this home by Horror haunted − tell me truly, I implore − Is there − is there balm in Gilead? − tell me − tell me, I implore!’”

Amasa’s mood altered utterly, a clammy claw of horror touching his spine, and he spoke a single word, “Nevermore.” He knew these words all too well, because they had figured centrally in the only murder case he had investigated that did not, strictly speaking, concern a utopian commune, the murder of Edgar Allan Poe. To his mind, “The Raven” was the most powerful work of literature ever written, concerning an ancient murder, that of Jesus Christ, and the slow death of Christ’s faith nineteen hundred years later, as Poe could not reconcile the death of his darling wife Virginia with belief in a just and loving God. So many years ago, as he learned the hidden truth about Poe’s death, he could not accept the poet’s condemnation of Christianity. He looked into the eyes of Noyes and waited.

“Now,” said the community’s leader, “you also have our fifth piece of evidence, the first direct sign that I am under attack. As I spoke the words ‘balm in Gilead,’ I could not raise my voice to a joyous shout, nor could I even declaim loudly the truth of the Gospels and my own role as healer of sick souls. No, I have lost my God-given voice, and can no longer speak before a crowd to proclaim God’s truth. I do not know if poison has been fed me, or toxic dust has been blown into the open window of my bedroom, or an evil curse has been spoken from afar. In any case, I have lost one of my capabilities, and fear another will be stolen from me soon.”

While unconvinced, Amasa was forced to admit that any of this was possible. In the case of Edgar Allan Poe, he had refused to recognize the truth for a long time, so in all modesty he could not quickly dismiss the five omens Noyes had shared with him. Noyes stood and walked to one of the high windows that overlooked the front lawns and the vineyard beyond them. Tall as he was, Noyes seemed small, silhouetted as he was by a two-story window illuminated by brilliant sun. Newhouse carefully wrapped the clues and returned them to his satchel, then gestured to Amasa to follow him. Without saying goodbye to Noyes, they left the Mansion House and walked to the trap workshop.

He had imagined the workshop would be a small room where two or three people sat at workbenches, filing teeth into the edges of small metal strips that springs would snap together. Instead he found a veritable factory, with dozens of workers operating elaborate machinery. Understanding Amasa’s surprise, Newhouse reported that Oneida was the most prominent trap manufacturer, annually producing more than a hundred thousand animal traps of numerous sizes, each designed to be the doom for a particular species.

“Amasa, I know you are an expert on the murder of humans, but I, in a very real sense, am the world’s expert not merely on the murder of animals, but the best way to do this for sake of human profit.” Newhouse affected a wicked grin, suggesting he was trying to ingratiate himself with the detective.

Newhouse then stood straight and declaimed in a loud voice, as if repeating a lecture he had given many times: “Wild animals are taken for various reasons besides the value of their furs. Some are sought as articles of food; others are destroyed as nuisances. In these cases the methods of capture are not essential. Animals that are valuable for food may be run down by dogs, or shot by the rifle or fowling-piece; and nuisances may be destroyed by poison. But for the capture of fur-bearing animals, there is but one profitable method, namely, by steel traps. Other methods were much used by trappers in old times, before good steel traps were made; and are still used in semi-barbarous countries, where steel traps are unknown, or cannot be had. I will briefly mention two or three of these methods, and the objections to them, and after that give my views of the true method.

“The dead-fall is not manufactured in a factory, but constructed near trees, using an axe to cut logs, one of which will drop on the animal, thereby killing it. But dead-falls are messy in their results, limited to woody areas, and often failing in their lethal purpose. Strychnine poison will reliably kill foxes, but the poison spreads through the entire body, ruining the fur. Shooting is a common method, but leaves holes in the animal’s skin, totally ruining the fur if a fowling-piece is used, which some ignorant people call a shotgun. No, a properly designed steel trap is best, and I have designed mine on the basis of years of experience and deep analysis to be totally reliable, easy to use and reuse, permitting no escape, and doing the least possible damage to the fur.”

With a sweep of his hand, Newhouse gestured at a collection of traps, all of exactly the same design but different sizes. “These are my traps, but they also are Oneida’s traps, perfect in their own way as members of the community are in theirs. That is why I am adamantly opposed to the many current attempts to change Oneida. Once a perfect design has been established, there must be no alterations. Notice the exceedingly innovative shape of the pair of springs on each trap, one on each side of the jaws.” Newhouse held his fists on either side of his mouth, with elbows straight out from his shoulders, forming his arms in very much the shape of the springs.

“But what you cannot see, Amasa, is that the steel of the spring has been scientifically tempered, so it will never lose elasticity, and remain perfect until perhaps rust after many years brings its own death. Similarly, each member of this community is being tempered, if you don’t mind the metaphor, in spiritual fire and water, to become perfect like my traps.”

After an hour inspecting traps for animals of different sizes, Amasa decided it was time to return to the subject of the threats on the life of Oneida’s leader. Choosing his words carefully, because he was beginning to think that the threat was a delusion, he mentioned that Lillie referred to the untimely death of John’s brother. “Indeed, Amasa, it was doubly unexpected. But, first of all, you must realize that he had three brothers. The death of the first one, George Washington Noyes was definitely untimely.”

Rather than get the details of this demise immediately, Amasa thought he’d better get the fuller picture of the family. “At dinner, I heard someone mention Victor Noyes. Is he one of John’s brothers?”

“No, Amasa, one of his sons. His full name is Victor Cragin Noyes, because he was a child of Mary Cragin, and one of the first perfect children fathered by our leader outside his marriage to Harriet Noyes. Except he was not really so perfect, a small child when his mother drowned, and perhaps not ready to accept our strict regulations against excessive love between mothers and their children. To complicate matters, his twin sister Victoria died three days after they were born, and there were some suspicions that Victor had weakened her in the womb by taking more than his equal share of sustenance from their mother. Anyway, in his youth Victor became mentally ill and his father placed him in an insane asylum for a while. Currently he works in our gardens, but at the moment is away on a trip in his other job as salesman. The second brother of our leader, Horatio Smith Noyes, is a banker back in New England, and not currently active in our community.”

“If I may ask a painful question,” Amasa began then paused. Newhouse stared at him, giving no expression that might encourage completion of any painful questions. “Is it possible that Victor, in his mental instability, is leaving various odd things around the community, such as dead rats or verses by dead poets, and in fact there is no dire threat?”

Anger briefly flashed across Newhouse’s face, then his countenance again became inscrutable. “No, Amasa, the threats are real, although you have not yet seen much of the evidence. The other adult son, Theodore is a threat because he lacks commitment to the community. He doubts the existence of God, which is every bit as insane as Victor ever was, merely not diagnosed as such by the mental asylum he attended, namely Yale College. I may be the only member today who devoutly wishes to preserve Oneida exactly has it has been for decades, communist but not spiritualist, in a word, perfect.”

Sensing that the conversation was turning in a dangerous if interesting direction, Amasa asked the name of the leader’s third brother. “Yes, Amasa, the third brother’s death was untimely, although due to malaria not murder. His name was George Washington Noyes.”

“Wait a minute, Mr. Newhouse,” Amasa interrupted. “You already mentioned George Washington Noyes.”

“Now, Amasa, you have no idea how complicated life can be. John had two brothers named George Washington Noyes. The eldest died when he was a boy, a death you would agree was untimely, and his name was transferred to the youngest brother, as a form of resurrection, if you will. Please, you must not leap to conclusions, but accept the truth as I tell it to you.”

Blodgett was not quick to anger, but Newhouse’s insulting tone and dictatorial manner had passed endurance. “I am here to help, Newhouse, but I sense that the problem may not be physical but spiritual. Many utopian communes reach a point in their history when faith fades and the diverse desires of members pull in many different directions. A common result is complete disintegration of the community, but often the result is a split between two factions, one upholding the tradition and the other seeking a new path. I see no evidence that anybody’s life may be in danger, but Oneida’s way of life may be.”

A knock at the door prevented Newhouse from retaliating, whether with voice or fist, and Lillie arrived to escort Amasa to the next stop in his tour, the silk works. As they walked, she mentioned that Harriet Noyes had invited him to have tea with her at four o’clock, and afterward the community as a whole would have a picnic supper on the lawn.

On this particular day, only three of the women were working in the silk manufacture, but in economic terms it was second only to the trap manufacture, and often as many as thirty people would be industriously making thread. In the mid-1860s, the community had recognized that buying silk thread with which to sew fine clothes, whether for sale or their own use, was costly. To be sure, the raw materials are expensive, but the manufacture even more so, to produce a product that was fine, even along its full length, and brightly colored to match whatever garment it might sew together. Therefore machinery was needed, and given the abundance of highly skilled craftsmen, Oneida made its own machines, and earned some extra money selling some to competitors.

Amasa admired the fine work of the people and machines, keeping to himself the question of why people wanted garments partially manufactured by spiders, but he then paid close attention when Lillie showed him a prized possession the women of Oneida had made a few years earlier, The Best Quilt. From it he might learn more about the status of women in the community.

Often earlier in his life in New England, and later among the Shakers, he had observed a group of women stitching pieces of cloth together to make collective quilts. One kind was the so-called crazy quilt. Originally, these were poor women’s efforts to make something useful out of scraps of otherwise valueless cloth, or varying colors, sizes, and even textures. But then groups of women began bringing whatever materials they happened to have to a quilting bee, usually for fun rather than out of poverty. The Best Quilt was not crazy, but of the exceedingly serious and currently popular commemorative quilt variety.

The women of a conventional family often made a quilt together, as an expression of their support for one of them who was about to be married, and she would treasure it throughout her marriage. On rare occasions, a quilt would be made for a funeral out of clothing that had belonged to the deceased person. Local chapters of the recently founded Women’s Christian Temperance Union often made a quilt decorated with the signatures of contributors, setting a specific donation price for each square. The Best Quilt was a very carefully assembled collection of forty-five diamond-shape cloth illustrations of women’s work at Oneida.

One patch displayed a picture of gaily colored spools of thread, produced in reality as well as imagery by Oneida’s silk works. Another showed skeins of silk made for embroidering and also sold to the general public. Two patches showed American flags, acknowledging the community’s connection to the nation, and one depicted two women of the Native American tribe who were the original Oneida community. Others showed desks women worked at, a lathe they operated in the machine shop, and a collection of hand tools that only men in the wider society might use but here women were experienced with. Two pictures of children showed several equally tiny community members, indicating they were raised collectively.

Lillie took Amasa to the library, where they ate lunch while discussing the documents piled on the table, and he expressed the two great doubts he had developed. First, by his writings and the patience he had displayed criticizing Oneida for years, Mears did not seem a likely suspect for violence. Second, while the community had a turbulent history, and was currently experiencing stresses, there seemed no conclusive evidence that anybody was preparing to murder John Humphrey Noyes. Lillie squirmed,

“Many conflicts are simmering,” Lillie objected, “and only God knows how serious some of them are.” She scanned one of the shelves of books, and retrieved one in red leather binding. “This publication was written by a former member of our community, Charles Guiteau, who worries us very much, because he seems so violent.” She handed it to Amasa, who glanced at the title, _The Truth_ , and raised an eyebrow. Lille urged him to read the second appendix at the very end, and he discovered it was a prediction that the sun would soon explode, destroying the Earth. He thumbed quickly through and saw many intense proclamations about doom, along with historical interpretation of the history of Christianity.

“Many people feel this book was plagiarized from the works of Father Noyes,” Lille reported, “and in an odd way there is some truth to that claim. For example, both we and Guiteau believe that Christ has already returned to Earth, and the Second Coming lies in the past, not the future.”

Amasa nodded. “Yes, he returned in his resurrection, on the third day.”

“No,” Lillie retorted, “he returned in the year 70 AD. Father Noyes long ago explained that Jesus very clearly told his disciples that he would return during their lifetimes, but make a full return, not merely touch the spirits of one or two disciples on his way to Heaven, but usher in a true age of perfection, not immediately rendering the world free of imperfection, but giving humanity the means by which to perfect themselves. Well, that is also what Guiteau claims, without thanking Father Noyes for having decades before made this grand discovery. This book was only just published this year, but here, let me show you our handbook from 1867.” She took one copy from a stack of thick volumes, opened it, and read a paragraph to him out loud.

“We believe that the Second advent of Christ took place at the period of the destruction of Jerusalem; that at that time there was a primary resurrection and judgment in the spiritual world; that the final kingdom of God then began in the heavens; that the manifestation of that kingdom in the visible world is now approaching; that its approach is ushering in the second and final resurrection and judgment; that a church on earth is now rising to meet the approaching kingdom in the heavens, and to become its duplicate and representative; that inspiration, or open communication with God and the heavens, involving perfect holiness, is the element of connection between the church on earth and the church in the heavens, and the power by which the kingdom of God is to be established and reign in the world.”

With a great sigh, she took Guiteau’s book from Amasa, placing it flat on the table, then placed the Oneida handbook on top of it. “We call Guiteau, to make light of him, ‘Charles Gitout,’ because he twice came to Oneida for a while, and twice got out. Between those periods of fellowship, he attempted to start his own religious movement in Hoboken, New Jersey, and published a newsletter called _The Daily Theocrat_. After his second term here, he tried to become an attorney and sued Father Noyes, God only knows what for. Father Noyes has explained to us that Guiteau is insane, but now this book titled _The Truth_ presents many of our beliefs as the discoveries of the author, intermingled with craziness. Yes, we agree with him that the Second Coming occurred in 70 AD and great transformations lie ahead, but not the devastating explosion of the sun!”

Amasa could see that Guiteau’s insane plagiarism of Oneida’s beliefs could discredit them with outsiders who otherwise might be friendly, and that he himself could pose a real danger. But this felt like a distraction from his immediate task, which was learning about the people at Oneida here and now. He asked Lillie what plans she had for him this afternoon, specifically whether she would show him the new silver works. Instead, she invited him to meet two leading men of the community, as they played a new game called “croquet” with her and with John Cragin. “One of them, William Hinds, has been at Oneida since its founding. The other one, James W. Towner, joined just about five years ago, but has become very central to many of our discussions.”

Amasa said he would like to play this new game with them, if they did not mind, but Lillie explained that croquet required an even number of players, or a number divisible by three, so there could be teams of equal sizes. Still brooding about his conversation with Newhouse, and seeing the game as a way of smoothing over relations with that difficult man, he suggested that they invite him to bring the total number of players to six.

As they walked back to the trap workshop, Lillie explained the game to Amasa. “Croquet is a new game just imported from England, but the name sounds French. It is spelled C-R-O-Q-U-E-T, but you don’t pronounce the T.” Amasa reminisced back more than forty years, when he had sorrowfully learned of the death of his friend with a similar name, David Crockett, member of the House of Representatives from Tennessee, who had died at the battle of the Alamo in Texas. He forced his mind to listen to Lillie. “It is the best sport for us, because it provides very good outdoor physical exercise, yet offers equal chance of winning to men or women, young or old.”

Newhouse agreed to join them, and as they headed toward a distant patch of lawn, he outlined the rules as if he were explaining the engineering of one of his traps. “Any number of people can play, each one having a wooden ball and a mallet, hitting the ball through a series of ten hoops − also called bridges or wickets − and hitting two stakes, one at each end of the arena. Naturally, we made our own set in the workshops, and our arena is just a wide patch of grass. In fact, we move the game to a different area of lawn if the grass begins to protest. You start at one stake, knock your ball through five hoops, hit the other stake, go through the other five hoops, and the first player to hit the starting stake again is the winner. Well, there’s more to it, but this is the general idea.”

When the three of them reached the croquet arena, they found that three men were already there, Hinds, Towner, and John Cragin, who were engaged in an argument about which set of rules should be followed. Newhouse leapt into the debate, and began shouting: “The published rules specifically state that a booby cannot croquet another booby, nor a bridged ball, but a bridged ball may displace a booby by roquet, rocochet, or concussion! You cannot just make up your rules as you go along!”

John interrupted the argument, introducing Amasa to Hinds and Towner, who seemed like a pair of best friends, cheerful but rather aggressive in their demeanor. Amasa could not help but notice that Towner was missing his left eye, and wondered how serious a disadvantage that loss was for playing ball games, let alone whatever work he did. Winking his own remaining eye, Towner then returned to the debate, saying: “If there are going to be six of us, I suggest we play in three pairs, rather than two teams of three. I will go first with Hinds, John and Lillie can go second, and Sewell can team up with the newcomer and instruct him in the strict rules as we progress. Since we rotate turns, that means I go first, followed in order by John, Sewell, William, Lillie, and Mr. Blodgett bringing up the rear, and learning by watching our actions.”

Towner placed his ball beside the starting stake and whacked it with his mallet, sending it straight through the first two hoops. Newhouse whispered to Amasa that going through a hoop earned a player another whack, so Towner now had two chances to get through the third hoop, which would put him in a great position to get through the fourth and fifth as well. Towner hit his ball back at an angle, hoping to get it in position for a straight shot through the next three hoops, but a tuft of grass halted it in a bad position, from which his next shot caused it to hit the third hoop and bounce back, rather than going through.

As John prepared for his turn, Newhouse restarted the argument, but with a different topic, the rules for romance at Oneida: “Towner, I really think you should stop your campaign to replace Father Noyes with a committee in deciding first husband for the girls at Oneida. Really, you have not lived here long enough to understand the importance of upholding our most sacred traditions.”

In a slightly angry tone, Towner responded: “I agree that it is crucially important to select a spiritually perfect man to introduce each girl to amative intercourse, as soon as seems appropriate after her first menstruation. The exact timing is something that John’s brother could advise us on, given his medical knowledge. It is not obvious that Father Noyes needs to bear this responsibility now that many of the senior men have achieved equal perfection. In the early days, it made sense for him personally to be first husband for a girl, but he is old now, and has somewhat withdrawn from the life of the community. A committee consisting of myself, William, John’s brother George, and even you, Sewell, can make a more accurate selection, aware as we are of our own and each other’s level of perfection, and what other responsibilities each of us has at the time when one of the girls is ready.”

John completed his turn, having gotten his ball through the third hoop and into the fourth but not through it. He contributed a third opinion to the debate: “Why not wait until the girl is old enough to make her own decision? If you worry that some of the men have not mastered amative intercourse yet, and might fail to hold back their climax such that the girl becomes pregnant, then you could give tests to all the young men, allowing only those to be first husband who proved they could have intercourse without climax. That would preserve the principle that only spiritually advanced men should father children, so that they would begin life at a more advanced spiritual level.” Only now did it occur to Amasa that this was a rather sensitive topic to be debated in the presence of Lillie, especially if she and John had feelings for each other.

Newhouse placed his ball, but did not immediately hit it, walking over to the balls belonging to Towner and John, inspecting them, and commenting, “Amasa, the importance of rules comes into play when people with different abilities live together in one community. These two balls belong to rather poor players, inexperienced ones, if they need an excuse. Let’s see whether I am any better.” He knocked his ball through the first two hoops, then hit it back, but aiming for Towner’s ball rather than simply trying to get in perfect position for the third hoop. Crack! Yes, the balls collided. “Roquet! So, Amasa, now you will see what roquet-croquet means.” He placed his foot on his own ball, using the mallet to strike it, sending Towner’s ball far away, then hit his ball in the usual way just through the third hoop, in perfect position to hit John’s ball, earning the right to roquet-croquet it out of position, then getting through the fourth and fifth hoops in one whack each.

In growing amazement, Amasa watched Newhouse calmly knock his ball into position to go through the sixth and seventh hoops, striking the so-called turning stake, then back through hoops seven and six, turning into position to go through hoops eight, nine and ten, then returning through hoops two and one to the starting stake. “Grand round! That was not entirely a fluke, Amasa, because I am technically very proficient, but only with God’s help could I avoid an error over such a long and uneven course. As with this game, so with my life. And we, Amasa, have won this game, so I am going back to work.” Without so much as a glance at the others, Newhouse strode away.

In hushed tones, the five remaining players briefly debated the situation. Newhouse had not really won, but he certainly had demonstrated superiority. William placed his ball, and actually got through the third hoop before losing his turn to Lillie, who equaled him but chose not to perform the roquet-croquet maneuver. Amasa got through the first two hoops, and both Towner and John got back into position for the third hoop. For many minutes they took their turns in order, each deciding to hit the starting stake when he returned to it, and end their round rather than going through the hoops gain. Finally, Amasa himself completed the course. They hardly spoke, did not count points beyond what was needed to decide if a player had one more hit on the ball, each wondering to himself whether the victory of Newhouse was a good argument against abandoning the faith that had bound them to Oneida’s unusual set of romance rules.

Abruptly, John Cragin raised a question about the croquet field. “When I was at Yale, I seem to remember seeing some people paying this game, but it was different somehow. We must agree that Sewell did a remarkable job getting through all the hoops, but aren’t they possibly too close together?” He walked paces between the two stakes. “Ten yards, about, or thirty feet. Is that enough? Should we check the rulebook in the library?”

“Maybe,” Towner replied. “But why should we believe that some British aristocrat’s idea of the correct distance is the right one for American communists? We prefer being close together. Or, shouldn’t the beginning of each game here at Oneida be a vote on how far apart the stakes are? After that, each player could place one hoop wherever he or she wants, near or far.”

A wry smile flashed across John Cragin’s face. “No, each year Father Noyes should lay out the course, as he does for so many games we play here. Perhaps we should construct a second croquet set, so that after Theodore succeeds Father Noyes as leader, he can decide the layout of one croquet field, while you, Towner, lay out the other.”

Only now, did Amasa see Lillie blush. She had held back from the debate, but now entered it. “Yes, as I recall John is right. The two stakes should be not thirty feet apart, but thirty yards. And what is the proper distance between a man and a woman? I wonder.”

John and Lillie accompanied Amasa back to his room in the Mansion House, where he planned to rest until it was time for tea with Harriet Noyes. Perhaps already having exhausted their ire at Newhouse, they discussed Towner. John explained that about five years earlier, he had led a group of a dozen people to Oneida from a disintegrating free love community in Berlin Heights, west of Cleveland, that had been struggling both with internal divisions and the hostility of the prudish citizenry who lived around them. They were frugal and made some money growing fruit, but were disorganized, and Towner probably felt that the great discipline at Oneida could support a better life, if demanding a degree of obedience to a definite set of principles.

John commented, “One of the things we don’t know about the community Towner came from was whether they were spiritualist or not. I keep getting the sense that communication with the dead was one of their practices, but the spiritualists my brother talks with outside Oneida reject the idea that Free Lovers could be aligned with their movement. We at Oneida, of course, are not Free Lovers, but have the most advanced customs for sharing love in a principled way.”

Amasa asked John whether Towner might be the threat to Oneida that everyone feared, perhaps leading his group of a dozen Free Lovers in a covert rebellion. But it was Lillie who answered. “No, he does question the authority of Father Noyes and Oneida’s traditions, but unlike Guiteau he is quite sane. I believe he is also an honest man. We can wonder whether he will always be here, a member of the community, or will wander away some day, as he did from Berlin, perhaps even drawing a handful of other members with him.” John did not seem to counter Lillie’s favorable opinion of Towner, nor to endorse it, and they had come to the balcony overlooking the sitting room. John and Lillie took their leave, and Amasa lay upon his bed, only half awake, his mind drifting.


	4. Jaws of the Trap

Amasa Blodgett returned from his afternoon nap to full consciousness when he heard Harriet Noyes’ sour voice call to him. He descended the stairs and joined her at the table in the sitting room, as Lillie placed a plate of currant jelly tarts and a pot of tea. Once Lillie had departed, and he was alone with Mrs. Noyes, he worked hard to suppress his urge to ask her difficult questions, such as whether she resented her husband’s relations with other women, among them Harriet Worden. Instead of speaking, he listened closely, as she chatted about matters that seemed unimportant, but might have hidden meaning. As she poured the tea, she lectured him about the community’s water supply, explaining that the spring-water was hard, which presumably meant it contained minerals, so they used cistern water for cooking − the rain that cometh down from Heaven.

Her normally gloomy expression became even more harsh, as she spoke about the weather at Oneida, her speech becoming ever more agitated. He nodded occasionally, and made facial expressions intended to encourage her to speak her mind. Perhaps she had long wanted to share her inner feelings with someone, outside the confines of Oneida’s system. She spoke of snow and ice, rain and lightning, occasionally quoting the bible for dramatic effect: “The Lord sent thunder and hail, and the fire ran along upon the ground; and the Lord rained hail upon the land.”

She paused, then in a calmer voice spoke about the past. “As you may know, many of us are natives of New England, so the weather here, so far from the ocean, was at first strange for us. I remember a day here when the sky was totally blue, not a cloud to be seen, then a perfectly straight line of clouds came slowly across the sky, until all the blue had been obscured. I felt like I was inside the eye of God, and He was slowly closing His eyelid. Back in New England, I never saw anything like that. We used to say there, ‘If you don’t like the weather, wait a minute.’”

She folded her hands, looking downward as if in prayer. “Now we are no longer in New England, because our branch in Wallingford, Connecticut, has been closed. It makes sense to have most members of a community such as ours in one place, a unity in every sense of the word, yet Wallingford had many virtues, including the fact it first developed some of our industries and did good publishing of our doctrines. But, whatever the business or social considerations, a year ago God told us we should abandon the Wallingford branch.”

“How did he do that?” Amasa asked. “Did Father Noyes hear the voice of God?”

She explained that God spoke directly to the people in Wallingford, in a loud voice indeed. In August, a tornado ravaged the town, damaging the buildings of the community but utterly destroying other structures in the nearby town itself. Thirty-four ordinary townspeople were killed, but no community members. “Heed the message God sent!” Harriet Noyes exclaimed. “The tornado began as a waterspout on Community Lake − our lake − but was still weak as it passed our lands headed directly for the unbelievers in town. We must indeed be His chosen people, for we were warned but not destroyed. Soon afterward, the exodus began as the people and machinery of Wallingford were brought here to Oneida. There are times I think we should have realized many years ago that New England was the land of the damned, and only far inland can we survive the ocean waves that will crash upon it.”

She then began a history lesson, describing the foundation of the original community in Putney, Vermont, and incidentally outlining her relationship with her husband. As she talked about the early years of her marriage, Amasa expected her to express resentment over his involvement with other women, and was surprised to learn that her feelings were not at all what he had imagined. She had been converted to his radically changing beliefs fully four years before their marriage, after reading an essay he had written about the Second Coming of Christ. They saw each other only occasionally, but she often sent him donations of money provided by her grandparents. Thus she was among his most loyal supporters, rather than the object of his romantic passions. This suited her just fine, as the deaths of both of her parents had given her a grim feeling about mortal life.

Marriage added one more duty, that of bearing him children, a painful obligation that ended again and again in a horrifying miscarriage. She loved her one child, Theodore, but wished he were more loyal to his father’s teachings. As she talked about all the ghastly details of her miscarriages, Amasa tried to understand life from her perspective, and realized that all her descriptions of intimate distress had a dual purpose. First, she wanted to tell him that she had been the most devoted supporter of her husband as he developed his religious antidote to the horrors of life. Second, she did not hate her husband for his sexual experimentation with other women, and indeed may have urged him to begin them, in order to avoid yet another miserable miscarriage.

To conclude her long and very personal narrative, Harriet Noyes drew a letter from her purse, as old and wrinkled as she was. “Mr. Blodgett, I want you to understand that I am not in any way guilty for the dangers that beset our community, and can be among your best assistants in uncloaking the real villains, whoever they may be. I shall read part of this correspondence to you, as a test of your understanding. If you fail this test, I shall not be disappointed. Rather I shall merely redouble my efforts to show you the correct path in your investigations. Tell me who wrote these words.

“‘Mr. Noyes attacked me last evening in a friendly way on my fear of ghosts, and asked if it extended to the Primitive Church. I said that it seemed so natural to associate with the word _ghost_ a white sheet, clammy touch, and mischievous intent, that it became me to see whether I connected heavenly spirits with such associations. Others spoke of the same disagreeable associations. It was noticed that the disciples were affrighted when they saw Jesus, thinking they saw a spirit. Upon examination, I was not satisfied with my emotions when I brought home to my mind the idea of seeing the forms of the heavenly church. I believed that I could control the outward expressions of fear, but still there remained great awe which I knew would make me act awkwardly. Surmising that my will had considerable to do with it, and that it was a great humbug to fear them in any shape, I resolved to cut that spirit in two. Mr. Noyes said that instead of their being spectres and skeletons, they were the most beautiful beings in the universe.’”

She gazed quietly at Amasa, anticipating his response. Rather than quickly try to guess the author of these words, he analyzed the context. “The reference to ‘others’ who also spoke suggests that the writer of this letter is describing a group meeting, with Mr. Noyes serving as teacher to a group of his disciples, just as the living Jesus was to his. The ‘Primitive Church’ refers to those disciples, but perhaps as they are today, living in Heaven and looking down upon us. Is it possible that your mother and father now dwell with them and look down upon you with loving smiles? And perhaps they have been joined by those children you conceived but who never lived outside the protection of your womb. Mr. Noyes seems to be urging you to seek liberation from your horror, and realize that all these people now thrive in a perfect realm that awaits you, too, in time: Jesus, the early disciples, your parents, and your stillborn children. I deduce that the author was yourself.”

“No, Mr. Blodgett, I was not the author of this letter. Yes, your analysis is a good one, but too narrow. This letter was not written by me but to me. The author was my best friend among the women of the community, Mary Cragin, the mother of John Cragin whom you know and of our doctor George Cragin. She was the first woman of our community, other than myself, with whom my husband practiced amative intercourse. This was not an act of infidelity, as the world would describe it, but of fidelity. He had developed his method of intimacy that did not cause pregnancy, except when the woman and the man agreed to bring a child into this world. I taught the method to her husband, father of John and George, and my husband taught it to her. In time they did conceive a child, but not out of uncontrolled passion, but as part of our plan to expand our community. Now that you know the identity of the author, perhaps you can deduce more about the circumstances under which she wrote it.”

Having failed to guess the correct answer to Harriet’s first question, Amasa saw even less reason to believe he could deduce the answer to the second. “Perhaps she wrote to you immediately after her first experience of amative intercourse with your husband, aware of your personal concerns about the deaths of loved ones and seeking to sustain your friendship through uncertain times.”

“No, Mr. Blodgett, wrong again.” Harriet seemed neither amused nor disappointed, but guiding him as a teacher might lead a student toward understanding. “She wrote the letter on July 16, 1851, already four years after giving birth to my husband’s son, Victor Cragin Noyes. The letter refers to a ghost or a spirit. When I first read the letter, I thought she was describing some anonymous deceased person, a stranger arisen from a New England graveyard, as happens so often in the popular novels. But now I am certain that the ghost was a particular person. What is the name of the ghost?”

How could he answer such a question? He guessed that none of her miscarriages had gotten to the point that the child would have received a name. Therefore, the ghost must be one of her parents. He dimly remembered hearing her full name when they were introduced. What was it? Harriet Holton Noyes. So, her father’s name would have been Holton. He did not have any way of guessing either his first name or the name of Harriet’s mother. By asking him the name of the ghost, she implied that he might know it. Thus he spoke his surmise: “Holton.”

“No, Mr. Blodgett, a logical guess but totally lacking insight.” She paused, leaned back in her chair, and enjoyed the expression of anticipation so evident on his face. “The ghost was Mary Cragin, herself. She wrote the letter from Brooklyn, just ten days before the sinking of the sloop, that caused her death. Now, so many years afterward, her son George has been communicating with her ghost by spiritual means, and she is helping our community merge with the spirits of the disciples and all the members of the Primitive Church. 

“Whether this will lead to a Third Coming of Christ, we do not know. It is even possible that we misunderstand the dangers that beset us today, and our feeling of dread is like Mary’s fear of her own ghost. Perhaps we shall all soon pass through the doors of death, together, in a glorious storm that will make last year’s Wallingford tornado seem like a soft whisper. Or perhaps we shall again survive, and the coming storm will sweep away enemies that until today have remained invisible.”

Harriet Noyes then lectured Amasa on his responsibility to think deeply, but to keep an open mind, as he sought clues about possible enemies who sought to destroy Oneida before its people could become immortal. She criticized the other Harriet whom he had met, Harriet Worden, not uttering the world “slut,” but coming very close to it. She seemed to envy Harriet Worden’s cultivation, including her seductive skills with music. She specifically accused Harriet Worden with having an affair with one of the more rowdy men of the community, James Vail, outside the well-ordered amative practices instituted by Father Noyes. She spoke of Vail’s violent temper, which more than once embroiled him in fistfights, hinting that Vail could belong to a conspiracy against Oneida, although she thought he was too stupid to be its leader.

“A recent example,” She noted, “was a dispute over ownership of some of our horses. James Vail claims, rather loudly, that they belong to him. Yet as a member of the community, he has no personal property, and were he to leave, he would have no right to take anything away with him. The horses belong to the community as a whole, not to him. Similarly, Miss Worden, for all her faults, belongs to our community, not to him. If the community permits him to mount a horse, or mount a woman, he must recognize that authority rests with all of us, not with him. Or, better said, authority rests with God.”

Their conversation concluded rather before supper time, so Amasa stepped outside the Mansion House to get a breath of fresh air. The weather was warm and windless, so many of the children were playing outdoors, well equipped with games and toys. He saw Pip standing near a crowd of young children, watching two of the boys fighting. They rolled in the grass, not doing much harm to each other, but shouting, “My turn! My turn!” Then one of the women separated them, giving a gentle spank to the behind of each, more as a message than a punishment. Amasa walked over to Pip and asked him what the fight had been about.

“Well, Mr. Blodgett, it was about Shocky.” He pointed toward where one of the girls was gaily riding a rather large and spectacular rocking horse. “I’m really too big now for Shocky, but all the smaller children love to ride him. That’s Corinna riding him now. See how excited she is?”

Amasa walked closer and inspected both the girl and the horse. She was very expressive and lively, shouting and giggling. The wooden horse was a yard high, with a noble head and posed as if prancing. Corinna’s feet were firmly placed in stirrups, as she bounced on the red saddle and tugged at reins tied to a rather realistic bit in the horse’s mouth. With all four feet off the ground, Shocky was supported by a huge spring set in a secure wooden base. “Beautiful!” Amasa exclaimed.

“Yes,” Pip replied, “most beautiful of all the girls.”

“Oh, I was referring to Shocky, but I agree Corinna is beautiful in a very different way.” Amasa had to suppress a knowing smile, suspecting that even only about ten years old, Pip was beginning to appreciate feminine charms. “The skin and hair of this toy horse is really fine. Instead of just painted wood, it seems to be covered by some tan-colored fabric, and the blond mane and tail are glorious. Would you say that Shocky belongs to the palomino breed?”

“Yes, sir, but his hide was borrowed from a real horse. Shocky is my favorite horse, and I rode him very much when I was younger. Sometime I would quarrel with another boy over whose turn it was to ride Shocky, but I am wiser now. The two boys who were just quarreling are too young for a real horse, but I am big enough now. Well, nearly. Maybe a month ago, they let me ride one of the biggest horses, but it ran away, and I could not pull hard enough on the reins to stop it, so it kept going until it came to a fence, and then I nearly fell off, because it stopped so quick. Two of my favorite horses now, Prince and Barnard, are really huge, and I can’t wait until I can gallop with one.”

Amasa asked what kind of horses Prince and Barnard were, and Pierrepont replied that they were Clydesdales. He said both were mostly reddish brown with black manes. Realizing that Clydesdales were tall draft horses, rather than riding horses, Amasa judged that the boy had some growing and learning to do before he would be an accomplished equestrian. Then he realized that the conversation had drifted to a topic that might be taboo, but was crucial to his investigation − the extent to which a member of the Oneida community could love another individual, whether it was a horse or a girl. To draw Pip out a bit, but not too obviously, he asked Corinna’s last name. Pip replied that it was Noyes. “Oh, does that mean that she is a stirp like you, and her father is the father of the community?”

“Well, yes and no, sir. We have different fathers, because hers is Victor Cragin Noyes, son of my father. I think Victor’s mother was Mary Johnson, but she died long ago. Her mother is Alice Ackley, that lady standing under the tree, watching Corinna ride. Of course Corinna and her mother must not get too sticky, and all the grownups are our parents, not just one or two. I’ve been thinking about Corinna and me, and how families work in the outside world. Am I her uncle? She is only two years younger than me, so that does not make sense, but much about the outside does not make sense.”

Rather than try to parse the complex family relationships in Oneida, Amasa thought back to their earlier conversations and remembered that Pip had spoken about someday having a sweetheart, although not being sure what the word meant exactly. He asked the boy, “Do you plan to give Corinna one of the rings you were making?”

“Oh, maybe,” Pip replied. “This a pretty good idea. But there is so much trouble about sweethearts. May I tell you a story, and see if you can help me understand?” Amasa nodded, so Pip began.

“A few days ago, Humphrey and I were walking up Christian Hill, when we came to the spring there. It wasn’t just a place where the water bubbles up, because there was a barrel sunk down into the ground so people living near could get their water easy. We looked down and saw something sparkle. With a long stick we pushed it and saw it was some piece of jewelry, maybe gold. We reached as far as we could with our arms, and tried forked sticks, but we just could not bring it up. Then along came Tip Thomas.

“He is not really a hired man, but lives in these here parts. Everybody knows him, lazy, but pretty good making bucket pumps and fixing things. Anyway, he has longer arms than we do, so we asked him to help us. He said it looked like some kind of brooch pin, and said maybe he’d seen it before. He reached in, pulled it out, and showed it to us. He said it was what he called a cameo, said it belonged to his sweetheart, put it in his pocket, and walked away. We yelled that it was ours, but he just kept walking.”

Amasa pondered the complexity of the story. Personal property might not exist inside a commune like Oneida, but Pip clearly had a sense of ownership. If the two boys had gotten the cameo, he wondered, how would they have handled ownership. Would Humphrey have said it was his? Clearly, Pip seemed to feel that he and Humphrey had first claims on it, because they had found it. Or maybe they felt it belonged to the whole Oneida community, and Tip Thomas was not a member. But they could not take it, which Tip Thomas proceeded to do. What would a court in the outside world have said about ownership? Clearly, Pip believed that Tip Thomas had lied about his sweetheart owning it, but they did not know for a fact that she didn’t. In an ideal commune, falsehood was supposed to be impossible, yet this boy clearly had well-developed suspicions that judged Tip Thomas to be a liar. Amasa asked Pip what Humphrey’s reaction had been.

“Oh, he said to me, ‘We’ve got to look out for Outsiders, even though they seem honest and speak friendly.’”

“Speaking of horses,” Amasa began in a bland voice, “have there not been some disputes recently about who owns some of them?” He did not known whether Pip would be aware of the disagreement with James Vail, that Harriet Noyes connected to the troubles the community was experiencing. The boy frowned and remained silent. “Mr. Vail, I am told, thinks some of the horses belong to him.” Still silent, the boy turned away. “Oh, I am sorry, Pip. Did I say something to distress you?”

“Stella,” Pip said, and fell silent again.

“Stella? Is that a person’s name.” Amasa was in no hurry to give up his interrogation, but was beginning to wonder if he was irritating the boy, or perhaps even causing him a degree of anguish. Still, he sensed that the boy was a good observer and might have seen things the adults might have ignored, with significance for the investigation.

“Oh, it’s my little sister,” Pierrepont finally said. “My mother and Mr. Vail brought her into the world a year ago. She’s just a baby, but cries and cries. She does not make me happy.” Amasa asked if there were any more sisters or bothers. “Oh, my older brother Ormond. He’s almost all grown up. Abram Burt was his father, but he’s back with his first wife, Fidelia, again. I’m glad we don’t get too sticky with our fathers, because I don’t feel good about Vail. But Mr. Burt treats me fine. And my own father, Mr. Noyes, is father to everybody.” Without so much as a farewell, the boy slowly walked away, leaving Amasa feeling a little ashamed of himself, but also perplexed about how much jealousy and sadness might be concealed beneath Oneida’s veneer of community.

While some members of the community had gone indoors for their habitually early supper, others had set up a big table outdoors and placed on it Graham bread, string beans, corn on the cob, and two kinds of omelet. At this point in the year there were no apples, nor would there be until some time in August, but the table was heaped with berries, red currants and black, strawberries and raspberries. Some community members sat on chairs or the grass, eating from plates, but Amasa was comfortable walking around to greet the people he had already met, and be introduced to others, returning to the table for a piece of bread or corn, then wandering again. In the distance he saw Father Noyes sitting on a lawn chair in the shade of a tree and reading a book.

Noyes looked up as Amasa approached, then showed him the title page of the volume. It was the recent travelogue by biblical archaeologist John Newman, _The Thrones and Palaces of Babylon and Nineveh from Sea to Sea, a Thousand Miles on Horseback._ Noyes said he was just reading the section describing the ruined mound that was believed to have been the palace of Nebuchadnezzar, and looked forward to reading about the Tower of Babel, which the chapter introduction informed would come in just a few pages.

Then Noyes launched into a whispered lecture about the Garden of Eden, which was no longer a garden or separated from the secular world, but a tortured area near the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. With enthusiasm that raised his voice to a clearly audible level, Noyes read aloud the paragraph in Newman’s book, just before he reached the ancient origin of humanity:

“Our progress during the night had been slow, as the current is strong and rapid. The morning light revealed a picturesque but sorry sight. The warm spring rains had melted the snow on the mountains to the east and north, causing the Tigris and the Euphrates to overflow their banks, and the Shaat-el-Arab to flood the country. The scene recalled those plaintive words of the inspired bard : ‘The floods have lifted up, O Lord, the floods have lifted up their voice; the floods lift up their waves.’ On either side, the palm-groves were dense, and in their branches the doves had taken refuge. On the summit of a mound above the water stood a solitary Arab, and near him sat the serious pelican. The shepherds had been driven from their folds, and had led their flocks to the higher ground. On our left was a submerged tomb, shaded by three young trees, and near it a deserted village, whose inhabitants had fled to the distant hills. The accumulated waters rushed by with accelerated speed, and against the united force of three rivers we ascended slowly to man’s primeval abode.”

Noyes then carefully explained that Newman had not fully understood his own experience. Yes, the Garden of Eden was the place in ancient days where humanity had been created, and sin had caused our expulsion. But there was a second Eden, a new beginning, where the rivers could wash away all sin, achieving perfection, and that Second Eden was named Oneida. Noyes stood and exclaimed, “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help!” He placed the book on the chair, and stretched his arms as if tired by his reading.

“Behold our domain,” Noyes said, as he turned a full circle sweeping his right hand across the entire horizon. “Six hundred and fifty-four acres, just over one square mile, of naturally fine, well-watered land. We have orchards, vineyards, meadows, pasture, and wood-land. I suggest we walk to our factories, half a mile from here. If you are tired from your activities, we can certainly ride instead, but I propose to walk leisurely and talk at length about anything that interests you.”

“Then let us walk,” Amasa said emphatically. “Both the exercise and the conversation will be welcome.”

“Excellent.” Noyes gestured at a row of buildings across the road from the mansion house. “There you see our offices and our school. The chemical laboratory is of value both to education and the progress of our industries, and our daguerreotypist develops his photographs there. You also see our laundry, the carpenter’s shop, barns and stables which we visited yesterday, a house where we dye the silk we sell, and a house where the children learn good work habits making boxes for the spools of silk.”

Amasa politely interrupted. “Yes, I have seen your remarkable silk works, but also your impressive trap factory. I plan to see your silver works soon. How did you decide to start such specialized industries?”

Noyes pointed at a field of half-grown corn stalks. “I recognized, very early in our endeavors, that a prosperous community could not rely upon agriculture as its sole source of income. To be sure, we raise much of our own food, here at Oneida, but unlike many other religious communities we have always tried to manufacture products of high quality for sale. We have experimented with everything you can imagine, including traveling bags and satchels, mop holders, and match boxes. In our first years here, I myself worked as a blacksmith. We set up a water-powered sawmill and provided lumber to the surrounding farmers. That led to a furniture business and to our most successful enterprise, which has been the manufacture of animal traps. At first we made the traps entirely by hand. We invented much of our own manufacturing machinery, chiefly because we did not have enough money to buy it. A decade ago we began manufacturing silk, and had factories at both our Wallingford and Oneida communities, which together employed a hundred and ten hired women who are not Perfectionists, at least as yet.”

“Ah, I have heard a little about hired men, but I did not realize you have so many hired women.”

“They are kept some distance from our community, and we do not attempt to impose our beliefs upon them. The greater number worked at our Connecticut community, but now you will see many here.” Noyes paused, as if he were brooding about the loss of the Wallingford branch.

Amasa sought the right words to ask about its demise. “Is it true that the tornado damage in Connecticut last year caused you to concentrate your efforts here? Or was unification of the community always destined to happen?”

The expression on the face of the community’s leader became grim, then he smiled. “We always seek to understand the meaning of misfortune. That was the most devastating tornado in the recorded history of New England, and it really was born in our pond, damaging our buildings only moderately before killing nearly three dozen people in the town of Wallingford. Some of the townspeople felt it was the beginning of the apocalypse, heralding the Second Coming of Christ. However, we interpret that biblical reference to describe the destruction of Jerusalem, so many centuries ago.

“Christ literally came in the spiritual world at the time predicted in Matthew 24, and sat in judgment on that part of mankind, both quick and dead, who previous to that time had been ripened for the harvest of destiny, by the influences of the Jewish dispensation and the gospel of Christ and the apostles.” He then lectured Amasa at length on how Oneidans agree with other branches of Christianity on some points, including the possibility of another apocalypse at the end of time, and disagree on others. He concluded by debating with himself about whether the Wallingford tornado was a message to Oneidans, which he suspected it was not, or a message to the world that only Oneida Perfectionism could protect the world from all the many dangers that beset it, which he thought it might be. The main lesson Amasa drew from the long soliloquy of Noyes was that the man really was thoughtful, and critiqued his own ideas, even as he espoused radical views.

Amasa then asked, “Do local people or your hired men often become Perfectionists?”

“It happens, but seldom. Those who have joined us since the original formation of the community tend to be cultivated persons with strong intellectual interests, rather than manual laborers.” Noyes grinned and continued in what seemed a sarcastic tone, “To be sure, we receive many letters from gentlemen, or perhaps I should better say from men who are definitely not gentle, inquiring about membership but revealing a prurient interest in our system of complex marriage. Needless to say, we do not admit men whom we believe wish merely to experience our women. The ideal Oneida recruit has long been on a quest for personal perfection, and recognizes that we offer reliable guidance for achievement of this difficult goal.”

Amasa then asked how Noyes would explain Perfectionism to a genuinely interested, well-educated person, with the implication that he, himself, was well educated, when really, like Lincoln, he was an autodidact.

“Whoever is born of God is free of sin,” Noyes replied. “But we hold that the second birth is not attained till the atonement is spiritually apprehended − till the perfect will of Christ crucified is received into the heart, his victory over the Devil perceived and realized, and his freedom from law by the resurrection appropriated. This spiritual apprehension of the atonement is not ordinarily attained in the first stages of discipleship. Hence we hold with imperfectionists generally, that there was in the primitive church, and is now, a class properly called believers or disciples. They are not sons of God, and therefore not free of sin. Yet they are in an important sense followers of Christ, and members of his church.”

As they walked, to the factories, then around near a small lake, than back toward the Mansion House, Noyes spoke of many things, Amasa speaking only enough to keep Noyes talking. After one long silence, Amasa plucked a memory at random from the depths of his mind, and shared it with Noyes. He had been in Northern Virginia, interviewing Sara Barton and another nurse about what they had learned from a dying solider about a plot to kill the president, when unexpectedly there he was, Lincoln standing with one of his generals, on an inspection tour of the medical base, from which the wounded were sent to hospitals in Washington City. He then asked whether Oneida had also benefited from Lincoln’s decision not to apply the military draft to members of the Shakers.

Noyes laughed and replied that they had received their immunity from the draft not from Lincoln, nor even from God, but from the incompetence of local politicians. Oneida was on the border between two counties, and neither county wanted to admit this radical commune was within their borders, so neither sent draft officers to gather up recruits for the Union Army.

The voice of Oneida’s leader grew very quiet again, as he speculated that the incompetence of local leaders was now helping Oneida again, but perhaps also preparing the way for a great harm. Local clergy were agitating for the destruction of Oneida, usually excusing their ire as disapproval of amative intercourse and mentioning rumors that Noyes himself had inducted very young girls to intercourse. Yet they had never quite been able to frame their accusations in actionable form, and the local politicians felt there was more to lose than to gain in attacking Oneida. For one thing, many local people benefitted from working in the community’s industries.

In a very logical manner, Noyes explained that God told him when a community girl was ready for intercourse, namely after the onset of menstruation. If she were not properly instructed, she might dally with one of the local boys and become pregnant with an inferior child. Ideally, all of the children should be fathered by community men who were far advanced in their spiritual perfection, and intercourse with others before that blessed event must be controlled so as to avoid unwanted pregnancy. In response to a carefully phrased question, Noyes counted that he had fathered children with thirteen of the community women, but now that other men had neared perfection, the job was not his alone.

The conversation turned to Pip and Corinna, a son and a granddaughter of father Noyes, and the fact that both of their mothers were well into adulthood when they gave birth to these blessed children. Would Pip become the man assigned to introduce Corinna to amative intercourse? Perfect as he might be, the boy would be too young for that task, which might be as soon as five years in the future, but indeed later on they might combine to produce really exceptional children.

When they returned to the Mansion House, it was already very dark, and many of the inhabitants had already gone to bed. Noyes was greeted by one of the ladies, who held a lighted lantern, but Amasa was forced to find his own way, which was dark once he had ascended the first set of stairs. He started into the sitting room and promptly stumbled into a table. He paused to get his bearings, thinking what the sitting room would be like if there were any light. 

Around him he imagined doors leading to individual sleeping rooms, some on this level and some on the balcony level above. The stairs should be on the left. Cautiously, he approached the wall, then followed it with his fingertips until his foot found the first step. He ascended slowly, his left hand against the wall, and he was so intent on keeping his balance that he began to feel dizzy. Finally he reached the balcony and went to the end where he recalled he own room lay. He thought he had left the door open, but now it was closed. He paused for a moment to think whether he might have come to the wrong room. His fingers traced the welcome carving on the door. Reassured, he entered and closed the door behind him.

He stood for a moment in reverie. His conversations with the two Harriets reminded him of his own wife, dead so many decades now. Had they strolled in midsummer darkness, chatting as he had just done with Father Noyes? He could no longer remember. Nor could he see her face in his mind’s eye. Briefly he also recalled the expression of frantic determination that had filled the face of Mary Dyer as she told him her desperate plans to rescue her children from the Shakers, not many months after his wife’s death. In many respects his attempt to help her had been unsatisfactory. With a shudder, he suppressed his memories, and stood pondering the present.

All his instincts and experience told him to doubt the view of reality offered by John Humphrey Noyes. So much the center of his own world, Noyes could hardly imagine the motivations and ideas of people who were free of his influence. Like other charismatic commune leaders, he had perfect insight into the needs that drove members to follow him, but only the dimmest impression that they had minds of their own. Noyes might be right that Professor Mears or some other outsider was behind the attempts on his life. More probably, one of the Oneidans was responsible, or a small group of conspirators within the community. Indeed, the whole affair could be merely a series of accidents and coincidences, with no murderer at all behind them. Still, Amasa knew that he must take the threat seriously, because he had accepted the duty to protect Noyes. The truth was, he was beginning to like the man, and would hate to see him killed.

Amasa took off the straw hat that had shielded the sun from his eyes, and tried to make out the features of the room in the midnight darkness. The nearly full moon should have risen hours ago, but only the dimmest patch of grey identified the single window in the small room. Amasa admitted to himself he had not noticed clouds rolling in to cover the sky while walking with Noyes. Directly beneath the window must be the small table and the one chair, and he imagined he could see a hint of their form in the darkness. But of the bed along the right-hand wall he could see nothing. As he did so often, Amasa decided to play a game with himself and try to calculate exactly where the center of the bed must be. With a slight movement of his right hand, he tossed the straw hat in that direction.

Suddenly there came a loud noise, like a gunshot at close range, followed by a thud and a clanking like chains. In shock, Amasa stumbled back against the door, then fell heavily to his knees. “Ai!” he shouted.

He heard quick footsteps on the balcony, then a knock at his door and a man’s voice asking, “Are you all right? Is something wrong?”

“Wait a moment!” he gasped. “I need help, but let me open the door.” As more footsteps hurried up the stair, Amasa painfully rose to his feet and fumbled for the doorknob. He could see nothing through the open doorway, and he cautioned whoever was outside not to come in until someone brought a light. He quickly felt his way out of the room, not knowing what peril might be crouching behind him, ready to strike. The man on the balcony shouted down for help. After a delay that seemed like minutes, the glow of a lantern illuminated first the sitting room below, then the balcony. “There is something dangerous in my room, maybe a killer,” Amasa stammered. He could not think clearly, but he doubted that a killer would have stayed in one place after taking a first wild shot. No, it must be something else but equally terrifying. “Can we get more lanterns before we attempt to enter?”

The sitting room and the other balcony on the opposite side filled up with spectators, as one lantern after another brought added light up the stairs. With hands shaking more from exhaustion now than fright, Amasa took one of the lanterns. With three strong men of the colony, he re-entered his room. They could immediately see the source of the frightful noise that had stunned him. There, on the middle of his bed, lay a huge bear trap, the shreds of the ruined straw hat clamped firmly in its iron jaws.

Amasa realized instantly that the playful impulse to toss the hat on the bed had probably saved his life. Had he sat or lain down, the powerful jaws could have killed him outright. Even if it had caught just his arm or leg, the injury could have caused death within minutes from loss of blood or in a few days from putrefaction of a jagged wound. He felt too weak to object when the men carried the trap down the stairs, but he called to them, “Keep it near so I can inspect it tomorrow.” 

His instinct to examine the bed was overcome by great fatigue, and quickly the men verified that it was safe and helped him to lie down. One of them removed his boots. Out of the fog the filled his mind, one clear thought arose. I am too old, he said to himself. Far, far too old for all this business. I could have died tonight, and I should have died long ago. As the mist closed in on his consciousness, he saw Father Noyes place his lantern on the table, turn the light down low, and cover him with his blanket.


	5. Mutual Criticism

At dawn, John Cragin awakened Amasa, saying, “I am sorry not to let you sleep any longer, but the risen sun gives us our first real opportunity to check your physical condition. Please ready yourself, and I will escort you to my brother’s medical office.” A brief visit to the water closet and tidying of his attire, and they began the short walk. The physician was a pleasant man in his mid thirties named George E. Cragin. He introduced himself by saying that like fellow doctor Theodore Noyes, he had studied at Yale.

“Had you fallen into that vicious trap, I must admit I have grave doubts whether my medical knowledge could have saved you, but with the Lord’s help, any kind of cure is possible. Let me tell you about an astounding recovery that occurred early this year, after a dreadful injury. At our Wallingford community in Connecticut, before the Great Tornado, Mrs. Sarah Mallory worked diligently in our laundry, which like the one here was highly mechanized. She is a widow, about fifty-two years old, born in England. One day she was doing the washing for the forty Connecticut members, when her hand was passed between the rubber rollers of a wringing machine. The machine was new, and the rollers were screwed down so that it brought a very heavy pressure on her hand, evidently crowding the bones all out of place and stretching the ligaments, besides seriously injuring the nerves of her hand and arm. When she came here from Wallingford, several weeks after the accident, not only were the nerves of her hand essentially dead, but the trunk nerve of her arm was paralyzed and caused her a great deal of suffering. It was helpless, and she had not sufficient control over her hand to bend her fingers.

“I told her the first time I examined her hand that, according to the ordinary course of such things, she must not expect to get the use of it under twelve months, if she did then. At the same time I told her I would not limit the power of God. Her general health improved, but her hand caused her the acutest suffering. It would awaken her in the night, and oblige her to get up and spend hours rubbing it and trying to allay the pain. If you have had a jumping toothache, you can imagine something what her suffering was, only the pain extended over the whole hand and arm, instead of being confined to one small place like a tooth. I have known of strong men who had the nervous system of an arm similarly affected, who begged that their arms might be taken off, and have indeed suffered amputation rather than endure the pain.

“For some time there had been considerable talk in the family about faith cures, and persons had talked with her on the subject, and encouraged her to expect such a cure herself. Finally Mr. Noyes’s interest was aroused, and he invoked a committee for her, not so much to criticize as to comfort her, and bring to bear on her the concentrated attention and faith of the family. She was stimulated by this criticism to cheerfulness and hope, and to put herself into the social current, keeping around as much as she could where there was the most life and faith. A private criticism soon after penetrated her spirit, and separated her from a brooding influence of evil that she had come under in a heart affair.

“A few evenings after this private criticism we had a very interesting meeting, and she was present in the gallery. The subject was the power of prayer, and there was a good deal of faith experience related. That night, she prayed to God to take away her pain, and she promised to devote the arm to His glory if He did. The next morning Mrs. Mallory came running toward me, saying, ‘I’m cured! I’m cured.’ She shook hands with everybody she met. Now she is busy washing dishes and making beds. So, you see my dear Mr. Blodgett, even a severe injury can be cured, with the help of God, the love of the community, and the marvelous system developed by Mr. Noyes.”

Amasa stared silently at Dr. Cragin for a moment, thinking. Then he spoke rather slowly. “The good Lord has apparently spared my life these many years for a purpose, and if my service to him on earth is not yet done I have faith he will continue to preserve me. The story you have just told is in fact a familiar one, and I have seen several miraculous cures myself, several among the Shakers and others in the various German immigrant communes. Yet the professional skill of a physician, such as yourself, is often decisive. God helps those who help themselves. You referred several times to ‘criticism,’ which reminds me of a practice of mutual criticism which I have seen in some religious communities. Do you have such a custom here at Oneida.”

“Indeed we do,” replied the doctor. “Usually it comes about when a member feels the need to request this form of spiritual assistance, but on occasion Mr. Noyes suggests it to someone who lacks the insight to recognize his or her own need. It is a gentle, loving practice, where all who know the person well express their judgments, the praise as well as the criticism, spoken mildly. The person responds with thanks, but a criticism is not a debate or a discussion. Afterward, the person is more aware and has the benefit of the plentiful advice offered in the session. Actually, this is one of the reasons why I find it difficult to believe that the murderer who placed that trap on your bed is a member of our community. We have all undergone criticism many times, and our souls are naked to our fellow members. How could someone contemplate such a vile deed, without everyone else knowing his intentions?”

Amasa asked if it might be possible to witness one of these criticisms, or whether they were entirely private. Doctor Cragin said that they were always held in the presence of at least a few members of the community who were advanced toward perfection, and sometimes in wider circles. They discussed the possibility that the investigation of Oneida’s danger might be facilitated by understanding how members of the community experienced mutual criticism, coming to the view that it would. The doctor said that he happened to know that one of these sessions, involving two members of the community, was to be held later that afternoon, and he would ask permission for Amasa to attend. Then the conversation turned back to the attack on the visitor from Zoar.

Doctor Cragin brought out a small box, the kind that might hold a necklace or other piece of jewelry. “We shall try a technique called the _spirit pendulum_ , which I have found useful in both diagnosis and treatment. I shall ask you various questions, about matters for which you do not have confident answers, and this tool may help us discern the truth. You may have, locked within your mind, fragments of information that provide hints about the perpetrator of this attack on you, or perhaps the motivations behind it. The process may also put your spirit at rest, working in a way comparable to prayer, thus ending the emotional harm the attack caused. Had the harm been your own fault, prayer would be indicated. But in this case you are an innocent victim, so we must use techniques aimed at the aggressor. Perfection of your soul should not be contaminated by the attempt to end your life, but pursued at other times by other means.”

Amasa saw some abstract logic in the doctor’s analysis, although he had no idea what a spirit pendulum was. The doctor opened the little case, revealing a silver disk, decorated on one side with a ring of eight circles, each overlapping the next, going clockwise, and on the other side a single large circle of the same form. He explained that this symbol represented the complex marriage system at Oneida, and the community’s principles more generally, in which all members were connected with all others, achieving a higher unity. Attached at one side was a braided string, apparently of silk thread in all colors, somehow combined into a circle with no hint of a knot at any point, again presenting complete unity of individuals into a single spirit.

Doctor Cragin cleared the small round table, and Amasa saw that its veneer carried the same images, eight smaller circles inside the big one that formed the edge of the furniture. Cragin handed him the end of the loop of string and told him to hold it over the table, such that the medallion would hang over the center of the table, not quite touching it. “Mr. Blodgett, are you a man or a woman?”

Amasa nearly laughed at what seemed such a silly question, but he suppressed the urge and sat still. At first, the pendulum hung motionless, then as his hand began to tire, it moved erratically, then began swinging, more and more, back and forth, toward him and then away, in a straight line. “See?” the doctor asked. “When we ask a question about whether a person is male or female, the pendulum will provide the answer. Swinging in a straight line, means male, while swinging in a circle means female.” He touched the medallion, holding it still directly below Amasa’s hand. “Now tell us whether the attacker was a man or a woman.”

Again the medallion began to move, in the same straight line. The doctor smiled. “Yes, attackers do tend to be men, because women are more apt to resort to wile or seduction whenever their selfish desires are frustrated. But, don’t you see, with the help of this spirit pendulum we have made progress in your investigation!”

Amasa rested his hand on the table, thought for a moment, then expressed doubts. “As logical as your inference may be, it seemed to me that my natural movement, as I feel fatigue, is to rock back and forth, as I often do in a rocking chair I have back at Zoar. Perhaps the pendulum has told us nothing at all.” 

With an expression that was half smile and half grimace, the doctor stood, walked over to his bookcase, at took from its top shelf on object that, when Amasa could see it well, proved to be a human skull, dark and shiny as if it had been varnished. He gestured for Amasa to stand and hold the pendulum above the skill. “Now, did this skull belong to a man or a woman?”

To Amasa’s surprise, when the medallion settled into regular motion, it was circling, counter-clockwise, rather than moving in a line. Clearly the pendulum was telling him the skull had belonged to a woman, so he looked quizzically at the doctor, awaiting an explanation.

“Yes, sir, the skull did indeed belong to a woman. She was my mother, in fact, Mary Cragin, who died many years ago in the suspicious sinking of the sloop named Rebecca Ford. Let me point out several related facts. A ford is a crossing point in a river, and on a ship named Ford she crossed over to the other side of life, namely death. In Genesis 24, Rebecca provides water, and it was in water my mother drowned, not in the milk of human kindness. In Romans, immediately after a mention of Rebecca, we learn that children may possess perfection, ‘For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth.’ So, you see that even the name of the vessel that transported her beyond this life had meaning, if properly understood, and expressed the form of perfection in which women can excel. However, when the pendulum circled above the skull, it did so counterclockwise, indicating evil, and we suspect that a human hand, not the Divine Hand, caused that sloop to sink.”

Doctor Cragin returned his mother’s skull to its resting place on the bookcase, then brought a large satchel near the table, opened it, and removed the trap that had nearly caused Amasa his life. Carefully, so as not to scratch the furniture, he placed it on the table, and gestured for Amasa to repeat the process. This time the question concerned whether a man or woman had placed the trap. The pendulum moved to and fro, confirming the earlier indication that the evil deed had been done by a man. In a tone of voice that sounded sepulchral but insistent, the doctor said, “Quickly, speak the first name that comes to you mind.”

Before he could think, Amasa said, “Newhouse.”

“Was it Milton Newhouse,” the doctor asked. For the first time the pendulum began moving side to side. “No. That is the negative response to a yes-no question. Was it Sewell Newhouse?” The pendulum returned it its habitual to and fro motion. “Yes! I assure you, Mr. Blodgett, that despite my explorations in the spirit world, I am by nature a skeptic, and would not even consider accusing our respected trap designer on the basis of this flimsy evidence. Yet, it is not implausible. Sewell Newhouse may be the only person here in the Oneida Community who never advocates any changes in our system of marriage, property ownership, or quest for perfection. This implies he would not be the perpetrator of the various attacks we have suffered, but it might prepare him to take extreme action, if he felt that our status quo were severely threatened. Milton is Sewell’s son, skilled in printing and painting, and far less emphatic in his views than his father. Furthermore, he was an innocent infant when my mother drowned, so certainly not responsible for that tragedy.”

‘Wait, doctor!” Amasa objected. “The name Newhouse can clearly be read on the trap’s trigger, that round piece at the center about the size of the pendulum’s medallion. Raised letters, cast into the metal, clearly say, ‘S. Newhouse Oneida Community.’ I was looking at the trap when I spoke the name Newhouse, so probably my mind was thinking of the trap and its maker. My spirit may, frankly, have been asleep, rather than speaking through my voice.”

They debated alternative explanations for a while, and agreed that no action should be taken, other than staying alert to any further evidence, whether physical or spiritual, that might identify the assailant. Then Amasa realized that his mood had changed. “Doctor, I must thank you for curing my gloom. You said that this experiment might have two benefits, and it certainly has returned my to my normal, if somewhat inquisitive nature, whether or not it provided guidance for my investigations. I thank you!” 

Just then the door burst open, and a man rushed in, waving his arms wildly. “Pat,” Doctor Cragin asked, “what’s the matter?” Too agitated to speak, the man gestured at his arm, which was bleeding slightly from several small lacerations. The doctor helped the man remove his torn shirt then sit down on the examination chair. “Mr. Blodgett, this is Patrick Maloney, one of our long-time outsider workmen. He is almost a member of the community, and spends much of his time here. He is our watchman, so we put great trust in him.” Maloney flinched as the doctor cleaned his wounds, then calmed down as bandages were applied. “So, Pat, what happened?”

“Well, sir,” Maloney began, “I was near the Arcade when I smelled smoke, went in and saw there was a fire. I fought it real hard, and that’s how I got hurt. I guess I should feel proud, because I got the fire out, and the Arcade did not burn down.”

“What’s the Arcade?” Amasa asked.

The doctor explained. “It used to be a cow barn, but we cleaned it up and use it as a fruit house, and the printing office is there, too. Oh, my! I did not think about that. Pat, was anything in the printing office damaged?”

“No, sir, I saved it all!” Maloney exclaimed proudly. “Every book and paper, and the presses, too. And all the fruit!”

“Mr. Maloney,” Amasa began, “would you be so kind as to show me the Arcade, as soon as the good doctor has finished fixing you up?” Maloney nodded.

“You are all set now, Pat, but take it easy for a few hours,” the doctor cautioned. “Thank you so much for your excellent service to Oneida, today. We will long remember your heroism! Oh, and Mr. Blodgett, I will ask permission for you to attend the mutual criticism session later today.”

As Amasa left the doctor’s office, he glanced back at Mary Cragin’s skull, which had returned to its place on the bookcase. As he accompanied Maloney, he had to listen to the man’s story of heroism again and again, whenever they encountered a member of the community. Eventually, they came to the Arcade, and he could see both how it had been a cow barn but now housed several other things, and was called an arcade. Most of the structure was a single story, with many windows across the front, but a higher half-story set back a short distance, and a small extension at the left end that looked more like an office. As soon as they reached the building, Maloney rushed away, apparently intent on telling everyone about his heroic deed.

The scene of the fire was obvious, and rather small, merely an empty space on the floor, with a few charred pieces of wood and some blackened rags. A moment’s examination of a rag revealed that it was oil-soaked, thus proving that the fire had been intentionally set. It appeared that Maloney had used an old wooden box to stamp the fire out, rather than his feet, and the blaze had never been very large. In fact, its location was not very close to other flammables, although had it been allowed to rage on it could have ignited some other nearby boxes. These were piled to one side and empty. Perhaps they had held apples from the previous fall. On the opposite side, but rather further away, were better quality boxes that might hold printing supplies, and beyond them a locked door that appeared to lead to the printing office itself. He would need to investigate that later.

He sat on one of the boxes and began his favorite pastime, speculation. Or perhaps it would better be called analysis, or the framing of alternative theories. Theory 1, of course, was exactly what Maloney had told him. An enemy of the community had set the fire, perhaps intending merely to frighten its members, given that the oil-soaked rags were not near much tinder. Or, in Theory 1B, the arsonist was acting quickly and had not thought about the fire’s exact placement, with the motive of destroying the printing plant. Perhaps the arsonist had been hired by the clergy who hated Oneida to prevent the community from continuing to spread its incendiary doctrines. Amasa smiled at his own pun.

What was Theory 2? Perhaps Maloney had set the fire himself. He did seem to be exploiting it to build his fame within the community. He worked closely enough with the Oneidans that he would have known that they felt they were under attack. By faking an arson, and putting out the fire immediately after setting it, he could become a hero.

Was there a Theory 3? Well, perhaps Maloney set the fire out of anger, then thought better of his rash act, changed his mind, then injured himself extinguishing the blaze he himself had ignited. But Dr. Cragin seemed to have friendly relations with Maloney, and there was no evidence yet about any trouble Maloney had been in. So Theory 3 should be kept in mind, more as a logical alternative and stimulus for thought, than as a real probability. Indeed, it was possible that a very real, well-organized conspiracy against Oneida existed, perhaps led by Professor Mears who hired some outsiders to do vile deeds like setting this fire, but simultaneously a few members and outsiders had their own grudges, and might add their own defiant acts to the confusing situation.

Then a really important thought came to mind: breakfast. He had indeed not broken his fast from dinner the previous night, but knowing his way around now it was simple for him to find the room near the Mansion House kitchen where some foods were always available. He noticed that Theodore Noyes was seated alone at a small table drinking tea and reading, and after an exchange of friendly nods, they began chatting.

When Amasa mentioned that he had just been examined at Dr. Cragin’s office, Theodore rolled his eyes. “Ah, yes, so many things at Oneida are not obvious to an outsider. Like myself, George Cragin studied medicine at Yale, but he really does not perform medical functions here in the community. I do, with help of others. George has become obsessed with spiritualism, so he and I have really gone in opposite directions since leaving New Haven.”

In response to a question about his own direction, Theodore forthrightly replied, “Toward science and away from superstition. We still know so little, but at least we can recognize our ignorance. How faith enters into the equation, is a matter of opinion. I must admit that before Yale, I suffered doubts about religion. Then I learned that doubts are not to be suffered, but cherished, because they can both free us and motivate us to seek the truth. At this point in my life, I am uncertain whether God exists at all, let alone in the form described in the bible. As to spiritualism, I must admit I am attracted to those ideas, and my father specifically tasked me with exploration of them. While George Cragin confidently seeks spiritual explanations for the phenomena of the human mind, I admit the possibility of physical ones, concerning the brain and the body more generally. While my father seeks absolute certainty, in the here and now, George and I share a curiosity that allows us to wait for answers, even as we hunt them, although in multiple directions.”

Their conversation drifted around several subjects, although it kept coming back to the mentality of John Humphrey Noyes. Eventually, Theodore admitted, with a laugh, “Ultimately I suppose I am an agnostic with respect to my father here on earth, as well as Our Father who Art in Heaven! When he was at Yale, my father suffered what he called ‘eternal spins,’ periods of intense self-doubt and misery. Should I diagnose those as episodes of mental illness? Perhaps, but perhaps not. Creative people cannot follow the well-trod paths that other people do. His eternal spins may have given him the motivation to seek certainty, and then to share it with other people. Clearly, some Oneidans found his path to be the right one for them, although it is not right for me. That puts me in a quandary, because I can admire his accomplishments, but am poorly prepared to preserve them after his death, which must come in the new few years, even if from natural causes.”

As if to change the subject, but having the effect of approaching it from a different direction, Theodore showed Amasa what he was reading. It was the April issue of _American Journal of Insanity_. They paged through it together, discussing all the articles. Near the back were book reviews and summaries of the annual reports of insane asylums. The one for Connecticut began, “There were remaining at the date of last report, 468 patients. Admitted since, 161. Total, 629. Discharged recovered, 32. Improved, 40. Unimproved. 36. Died, 40. Total, 148. Remaining, 481. Average, 474.” Theodore pointed out that this was far from the largest American insane asylum, yet it contained more people than the Oneida community did.

“Notice that only 32 of the discharged patients had recovered,” Theodore commented, “a smaller number than those who left the asylum by means of death, and a tiny fraction of the total population. When the asylums were built, thirty to forty years ago, the name implied not that they would be hiding places for the insane, but resorts where rest from the stresses of life could provide cure. But now they have become primarily custodial institutions. We used to think that madness was the result of nervous breakdowns, in which people with weak nervous systems were broken by events in their lives, and thus could be cured reliably by restorative rest. One of the common causes, the old asylum reports used to say, was religious excitement, often resulting from the excesses of sectarian movements.” But there was nothing about religion in the most recent issue of the journal.

One of the longest book reviews debated whether there were many kinds of mental illness, or just one, degeneration of the brain, which might manifest through different symptoms under different circumstances, such as additional physical afflictions suffered by the individual. Classification systems were compared, but all of them ignored the concept of the soul, and the possibility that some patients had healthy brains and were merely responding to difficult life experiences. 

Two articles in the issue catalogued the physical restraints that must be used to prevent agitated patients from injuring themselves. Another concerned the case of a murderer who, just before his scheduled execution, had feigned insanity, fooling ordinary doctors but eventually revealing that his madness was a fraud and being executed. Unfortunately for him, he had exaggerated the symptoms of madness, as popularly imagined, and a trained alienist had recognized the truth and prescribed that harshest of cures, death. The lead article was an installment of a long treatise considering the blood supply to the nervous system, under the conjecture that an insufficiently nourished brain would be likely to degenerate. It was hard to imagine a sincere, scientific publication more completely dominated by horror and pessimism.

As the conversation was drawing to a gloomy conclusion, Harriet Worden entered the room, singing quietly to herself a familiar tune, in a melodious voice: “Beautiful dreamer, wake unto me, starlight and dewdrops are waiting for thee; sounds of the rude world, heard in the day, lull’d by the moonlight have all pass’d away!” Theodore rolled his eyes, but commented favorably on the beauty of her voice, while Amasa recalled the questions that had been raised about the mysterious death of the song’s composer, Stephen Foster.

“Gentlemen,” she said in a teasing voice, “have you heard that we will have a special event next Sunday? Father Noyes has asked us to prepare one of our drama and music afternoons, and asked me to select a subject that would boost our spirits. I looked through our library, and he agreed with my choice.” She turned to Amasa and explained that every month or so the community staged a music concert or a drama, dividing up the parts among many different members, so that no one person would need to practice much, and all would be equal in artistic prominence. “It will be Bannister’s splendid patriotic drama about General Israel Putnam, hero of the Battle of Bunker Hill. I am trying to pick the right tune for the chorus that the drama begins with. Do you think Beautiful Dreamer will work? I’ll sing the first line: ‘We will be free-ee, we will be free!’ That works, don’t you think?” 

Theodore repeated his habitual gesture of rolling his eyes. “That scoundrel, Putnam? Saints preserve us! Well, I must admit he was a strong leader, and members of our community may need one right now.”

Other people began entering, and rushing to and fro, as lunch time had arrived. Before long, Amasa’s stomach was full, and he had made the acquaintance of many additional community members, finding that about half of them wanted to celebrate Pat Maloney’s heroism, and the other half wanted to speculate what roles they might play in the Putnam drama, given that they had never even heard of it before today. George Cragin passed by, telling Amasa that he was indeed invited to the criticism session, that would begin at two o’clock in the upstairs sitting room.

He arrived at the sitting room early, as a few people were rearranging the chairs, and Harriet Noyes stood by the door greeting everyone who came. “Mr. Blodgett, please visit me at the printing office, tomorrow. I will be working there most of the day, and wish both to show you our work there, and to discuss the fire that nearly destroyed the office. Really, sir, I am quite concerned, and wish your investigation could make more rapid progress. Perhaps this session of mutual criticism will provide a basis for understanding the ultimate source of the danger. Two members will criticize themselves and each other, John Cragin and Lillie Bailey. I do not mean to suggest that they are responsible for the fire, and I am sure they are not. But you will understand us better after this session” Amasa nodded, then took a seat.

The last people to arrive were John Humphrey Noyes and Sewell Newhouse, who closed the door behind them. John Cragin and Lillie Bailey were sitting on straight chairs, facing each other but several feet apart, with everyone else in the room seated in a circle around them. They all looked toward Father Noyes, expecting him to begin the session, but he nodded to one of oldest men present, and quietly said, “John Hutchins, would you state the two rules of mutual criticism, given that you are both a minister and the father of Lillie Bailey, one of the two beneficiaries of our criticism today.”

Hutchens spoke slowly and clearly, “In giving Criticism no person shall indulge in remarks suggested by personal enmity or resentment. In receiving Criticism the subject shall quietly accept what is said to him, making no reply, save to correct obvious misstatement of facts.”

Father Noyes then whispered, “George Cragin, father of the other beneficiary of criticism today, John Cragin, what testimonial for criticism does your own experience offer?” The elder Cragin looked slightly confused, and then turned to his other son, Doctor George Cragin, as for advice, receiving only a polite nod. 

Apparently deciding to adopt the older son’s medical perspective for the moment, the elder Cragin spoke, slowly and haltingly: “The truth given me by the criticism committee, was as truly a substance taken into my spirit, as a blue pill taken into my stomach would have been, and acted effectually upon my physical

as well as upon my spiritual system. There was no hocus pocus about it. I don’t guess, or believe; I know that the Spirit of Truth, the word of God, is quick and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword or visible materia medica, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. I therefore can, after twenty-five years of experience, re-endorse truth-telling or Community criticism as good for food and good for medicine.”

He halted, looked confused again, and his doctor son spoke for him: “It is good for the healthy, to keep them well; good for the sick to make them well; good for the good to make them better; and good for the discontented to make them happy. It cures egotism, self-conceit and all forms of disagreeable diseases resulting from the fungus growth of individual sovereignty.”

A much younger man, perhaps the age of John’s brother, looked directly at Amasa, sensing that he was a special audience for this trial, saying, “I Dexter Smith know that wonderful effects on both body and mind are produced by mutual criticism. It has the power of the strongest tonics, and can, in fact, be so applied as to produce startling changes in the human body. But the most striking of all its effects is seen in its operations on the spiritual nature of man.”

Another young man, perhaps the age of John Cragin, also looked toward Amasa when speaking: “I am George Miller, and my experience with criticism has led me to look upon it as a great source of relief. People who are accustomed to be clean physically, are uncomfortable, not to say miserable, when they become befouled. They have a kind of self-loathing that nothing but a bath can remove. The desire for spiritual cleansing by criticism seems to me to be just as natural and

instinctive.”

All this seemed quite encouraging, and yet a glance at John Cragin and Lillie Bailey showed that both seemed very uncomfortable, looking down at the floor, slumping, and fidgeting with their fingers. A glance around the room revealed several additional familiar faces, belonging to Theodore Noyes, Sewell Newhouse, the two Harriets − Noyes and Worden − plus several other senior men and women, perhaps two dozen in all. An uncomfortable silence lasted far too long.

“John, how are you feeling these days?” Theodore Noyes inquired. “Anything you especially want our help with?”

John Cragin looked Theodore in the eye, then downward again, speaking too quietly to be heard. Then he put his hands in the gesture for prayer, again speaking so softly no one could hear him, until he nearly shouted, “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us!” He fell silent again.

After another painful pause, Sewell Newhouse rose up from the chair in the back of the room where he had been sitting, walked over to John, and stood looking down at him. “Have you nothing so say, about being too sticky with this young woman here, Lillie Bailey? Nothing? Your growing attachment to her has been quite obvious to everyone.”

Theodore exclaimed, “Sewell, give him time to find his own words! Perhaps something very different is bothering him. And perhaps something is bothering you, we should enquire about, possibly resentments you yourself do not wish to acknowledge, because your behavior tests the boundaries of the rule for mutual criticism.” Father Noyes gestured for both men to be quiet, and Newhouse stomped back to his chair.

Harriet Noyes spoke next, “Lille Bailey, what do you have to say about your feelings toward John? Remember, exclusive relationships are not permitted at Oneida, and you have not been instructed to engage in relations with John, neither to produce a stirpiculture child, nor in purely amative intercourse.”

Lillie blushed, but did not reply.

Then Harriet Worden spoke, apparently thinking she was speaking for Lillie. “Yes, Lillie has not been instructed by one of the men to have one of the approved relationships with John, but why should he listen to any man other than John, himself. Yes, why should she not listen to one of the women? She and I were talking just the other day, about whether the women should take the role of allocating partners for both kinds of intercourse, given that our bodies are the theaters in which these dramas are played out.”

Harriet Noyes snapped back. “And I suppose you are proud about your filthy connections with one of the least of our men, James Vail! Father Noyes did not approve, as you well know.”

Now, John Cragin was ready to speak. “Please! Let us not introduce issues that belong to other people into the criticism of Lillie and myself. We certainly are not perfect people, yet we follow the rules, and contribute our best efforts for the well-being of the community. Lillie and I work together as bookkeepers, carefully managing the financial records of the community, and yes, Sewell, of the trap business as well. Imagine, if you will, that we were keeping the records for the moral behavior of community members, the blessings as well as the trespasses. We would do so with great care, not presuming to know, without good evidence, which investment was a waste, and which provided good returns. I am not a moralist, nor am I a doctor like my brother George who can diagnose health versus illness, nor am I clergy like Theodore and his father, yet in my mind I do keep a balance sheet of blessings and trespasses.”

Everyone looked intently at John, each speculating from their own perspective on where he was going with this sudden speech. “Right now, I am not thinking about today, but remembering a session like this one that happened about a decade ago, February 27, 1869, to be exact.” He stood for a moment, looking around the room. “Well, I do not believe either Ann Eliza van Velzer nor Homer Barron was invited to this session, so I will recall the event as best I can from my own memory.”

Several people in the room gasped, and Father Noyes visibly shuddered. “As I recall, it was Father Noyes himself who most vehemently criticized Ann Eliza and me for having special feelings for each other. If mutual criticism is so good a method for achieving perfection, then why did Father Noyes...”

“Silence, fool!” Sewell Newhouse shouted. Theodore gestured for him to be quiet.

“Yes,” John said in a caustic tone, “Father Noyes dictated that Ann Eliza should bear a child, but not with me. Instead she bore Homer Barron a daughter, Ruth.”

Harriet Worden leapt to her feet, and walked behind Lillie, as if to provide emotional support, exclaiming, “It was astonishing! I was shocked! Mister Noyes thought it would be an effectual cure for the special love between Ann Eliza and John. So, now, will poor Lillie be ordered to have a child with some man with whom she feels nothing?”

John continued, but in the tone of a bookkeeper giving an actuarial report. “Ruth is a fine child, and nothing said here should be to her discredit. She was the 48th child born in our community, and the 6th stirp. But notice, her parents were selected in order to discipline her mother, and, yes, to punish the man who truly loved her. Thus, Ruth was not really a stirp, her parents selected because of their perfection, but the incidental result of such criticism as we face today. Recently, Homer has fathered a son, Benjamin, with Constance Noyes, familiarly called Consuelo, who like Lillie and I possesses some bookkeeping skills, and I wish them all prosperity and perfection. I blame none of them for the spiritual or emotional situation in which I find myself. But if anyone demands that Lillie suffer in any way, he should count me as an enemy!”

The sound of two dozen people catching their breaths was followed by laughter from Lillie. “Oh, John Cragin, must you use me as a tool for your long-simmering resentment about never taking Ann Eliza into your arms. No, fellow Oneida Community members, John and I do not suffer from any sort of special affection. We love each other, but only as we love all of you, and all the others of our Perfectionist community. No, what we can confess is not exclusive love, but something worse, I fear.”

She paused, and everyone sat perfectly still, awaiting her shameful admission. “I am weak,” Lillie admitted. “I cannot speak for John, but my faith has shuddered, in fear that some calamity will soon leap upon us, something so horrible that it will make the Wallingford tornado seem like a summer’s breeze. If I had any excuse, it is that Father Noyes gave John and myself the assignment of bringing Mr. Blodgett here, and supporting him in his early days among us. I should have more faith. None of us should have any suspicion that the Lord would let any murderer bring to an end the life of Father Noyes, before he had led us all to absolute perfection. The Lord would never do such a thing. Whether Mr. Blodgett will be any help at all, I do not know, but Father Noyes in partnership with God will keep us safe!”

A sound like a distant windstorm came from whispering all around the room. John Cragin looked confused for a moment, then stood, picked up his chair, and moved it beside Lillie. “We two are not a romantic couple, but at the moment I feel we are the center of the community. We must stay close together, supporting each other and together facing whatever dangers may assault us. Today’s mutual criticism is not about the two of us, but about the entire community.”

At this point, to his surprise and that of everyone else, Amasa found himself speaking. “Yes, John has a point. Once the dangers have been settled, there will be ample time to resume your search for perfection. May I please ask a question?” Silence fell over the room, and the only answer was a slight nod by Father Noyes. “Does anyone here have information that has not already been made public, that might provide even a hint of the source of the danger?”

“Towner,” Newhouse commented. “He has been recruiting members to his faction. Already, William Hinds has become his lieutenant, and they are trying to turn our well-ordered community into a free love orgy. The next thing you know, he’ll having us worshiping a golden calf! He should be sent back where he...”

John Cragin interrupted, “Neither Towner nor Hinds is here, so it is unfair to criticize them. In my experience, they have been entirely responsible in their consideration for the community.”

Theodore Noyes took this opportunity to express his uncertainty about the spiritualist enthusiasms coursing through the community, which caused George Cragin to complain about Theodore’s agnosticism. Quickly, the room was in uproar, each person venting his or her own discomfort with this or that behavior by others. Almost unnoticed, Father Noyes rose and slowly departed. Soon others had left. On his way out, Newhouse said to Amasa, “Soon, you and I should discuss this situation more deeply.”

Puzzled, Amasa remained seated, as the room emptied. Only one person in the room seemed happy, Harriet Worden. As she left, she sang, “We will be free-ee, we will be free!” A brief visit to the library, to write notes about his observations today, then a pleasant and leisurely dinner, got Amasa to bed just before sunset, sparing him the trauma of again entering the bedroom in the dark.


	6. Flames of Hell

At breakfast, Amasa chatted with several people he had not previously met, then one handed him a recent edition of the local _Observer_ newspaper, from nearby Utica, which he read with some interest. He did not know what to make of a report about a wild baseball game played in Philadelphia back on July fourth, between two women’s teams. The Blue Stockings beat the Red Stockings, with a score of 36 to 24, in a game that ended when the audience rioted. What is the world coming to? Then he read a story much closer to his own field of expertise, if slightly inconclusive:

“A very remarkable case of mistaken identity is reported from the Auburn State Prison. Four years ago John Hay was arrested in Cayuga County for a heinous assault upon a young girl. Upon trial, if we remember aright, his sole defense was an alibi. To support this he had nothing but his own oath, and some straggling, inferential testimony, which amounted to but little. The prosecution had a strong case. Besides proving Hay’s bad character, and his presence in the vicinity of the crime, the district attorney brought upon the stand the girl herself, who was positive in her identification of the prisoner as the criminal. The jury did not hesitate to find a verdict of guilty, and the judge sentenced the convicted man to twenty years in prison − the full extent of the statute. Hay went to State prison protesting his innocence. Now, after four years of dreary confinement comes the news that he is believed to be guiltless. A Cayuga County man named Carvin has fled to Canada, after having confessed to the village postmaster that he, and not Hay, committed the crime. The telegraph explains that the two men resemble each other very closely and that the girl was mistaken. The case will be taken to Governor Robinson without delay and justice will be done. Strange as the case is, it finds a parallel in each of 300 cases recorded in the law books, in which men were hanged for murders or capital crimes committed by others.”

Amasa pondered whether law books really documented three hundred cases of innocent men executed for crimes they did not commit, but he knew that justice was not only blind, but often dumb. He wondered if the governor would commute Hay’s sentence, whether Carvin would ever be convicted, or if perhaps this story might turn out merely to pile one falsehood upon another. Folding the newspaper so that the next reader would see this story, he placed it on the table beside him, and headed toward the printing shop, which he remembered was in the Arcade just left of where the small fire had been set.

When he entered the printing shop, he was greeted by Harriet Noyes, who was busy counting copies of a pamphlet into piles of ten. In one corner, he saw James Towner, apparently going through old copies of Oneida publications, plus two young women who were setting type to print something new. Towner waved to him, and then return to his work.

Harriet Noyes smiled, an unusual gesture for her, and motioned for Amasa to sit in a large desk chair while she delivered a lecture about the printing business. “Mr. Blodgett, I am pleased to say I have been the primary partner of Father Noyes in disseminating his teachings via the printed word. At first, he contributed a few articles to a periodical called _The Perfectionist_ published by James Boyle in New Haven. There was much to like about Boyle, but he was very intemperate in his views. Yes, we agreed emphatically with him that slavery should be abolished, but exactly how we were not yet prepared to decide. He once said something so clear, and yet so disturbing, that I shall not ever forget a word of it: ‘Perfectionists stand as independent of each other as they do of any anti-Christian churches. They will not be taught by each other, as they are all taught of God, nor will they acknowledge any man as a leader.’ Unfortunately, that is one of those rare statements that is both true and false. Yes, many of the early Perfectionists were cranky individuals who could not agree about much. But as some individuals actually approach perfection, my husband prominent among them, certainly less perfect Perfectionists need to heed their advice.”

She pointed at the two women, and moved her fingers as if placing individual letters of metal type into the stick used to hold an entire line of text. “So, we needed to learn how to print for ourselves. Yes, the dowry I brought with me into my marriage with Father Noyes allowed us to purchase an old hand press from a business that was closing its doors in a neighboring town. I can tell you many amusing stories of all the mistakes we made, and clumsiness handling the equipment, but we learned, and in time built up a readership of hundreds and hundreds of people who were hungry for the wisdom were shared through these simple, and frankly rather dirty tools.”

They looked more closely at the work the two young women were doing, which seemed rather antique and quite similar to what Amasa imagined the original printing work had been like. Harriet Noyes explained that they were preparing to print a couple of dozen copies of a mere six lines, so the primitive old methods seemed quite appropriate. It was the chorus for the Putnam play, exactly what the other Harriet had been singing, about being free. One of the young women commented that they were intentionally using the methods of Putnam’s own day to make copies for performers to use on Sunday.

There could hardly be a greater contrast with one of the two main printing machines, a huge Campbell Combination Printing Press, used to produce over a thousand copies of each issue of the community’s magazine, _The Oneida Circular_. Harriet commented that some people say the machine can think, because a galvanic battery operates a device that senses where the paper is, to achieve perfect registration. It cost $5,000, a few years before, something like ten times the annual income of an average person. To Amasa, it looked like a fancy cart turned upside down, with a crank with which to turn the wheels, but made with great precision, a thing of beauty but quite strange. The other machine stood upright and was called a Universal, from the Hamilton and McNeal company in nearby Rochester.

Harriet Noyes seemed proud of the equipment, probably seeing all of it as the result of her own personal investment so long ago, when she and Father Noyes were doing all the work with their own hands. But she was most proud of the recently acquired book binding equipment, which proved they had mastered the printerly art in all its complexity. She explained that over the years, especially when the printing office was in Wallingford, they did much commercial printing, thereby paying for the machines and even the paper and ink used to print the Perfectionist newsletters, pamphlets, and even books.

A map of New York and New England decorated the wall, and she pointed to it while tracing the movements of their printing efforts. “We began in Putney, Vermont,” she said while pointing near the state’s southeast corner, “not to be confused with Poultney,” pointing westward. “If you look at this copy of my husband’s book, _The Berean_ , you will see it was published in Putney in 1847, at the office of _The Spiritual Magazine_ , which is what we called the _Circular_ at that time.” She pointed down near the middle of the Connecticut shoreline. “Here is New Haven, where my husband, my son, and some others attended Yale College. Just north and a little east is Wallingford, an hour’s ride away. The Boston Post Road goes through New Haven, as does a good railway, although for reasons I cannot fathom the railways in that area keep going bankrupt and being reorganized and renamed, despite all the good business they must have. So Wallingford was not the most convenient location imaginable, but well situated to ship publications down to New York City and westward, or east to Providence and up to Boston.”

In a rambling way she described the importance of printing, as the means for building a much vaster community than the three hundred souls who were formal members of the community, including three thousand readers, or perhaps even thirty thousand. Soon, Amasa sensed she was talking about the possible motivation of the enemies who sought to destroy Oneida. It was not so much the square mile of land, nor the people living on it, but the ideas that were in danger, perhaps because imperfect people felt threatened by them.

Towner must have been listening, because he did not change the subject when he interrupted, “Yes, printed ideas can be destroyed by fire, but ideas held in the mind may be destroyed by doubts.” He held up a note pad on which he had been writing, and then some printed pages. “I’ve been looking back at a debate from four years ago, and struggling to think about it in new ways. I’m sure there is a copy of this old report in the library, but I felt more comfortable looking for one here, away from scholarly bookshelves. Mr. Blodgett, you may not have heard this, but before I came to Oneida I was an attorney and a judge, and even when I am settled in my own opinion, I feel the need to think again from another perspective.”

Amasa said something bland but complimentary, and he noticed that Harriet Noyes had become somewhat tense upon hearing Towner speak. “Yes, Harriet,” Towner said, “I am looking back at the five principles for truth seeking your son, Theodore, stated, when he was first considered as heir to the leadership of our community. Here, Blodgett, read them for yourself.” He handed over a printed page.

Amasa read quietly to himself: “I want to found my beliefs on evidence; such evidence as I have been satisfied with in the ordinary problems of life. I want to hold these beliefs so that I can change them, if new evidence seems to require it. I want from time to time to reconsider in the light of present experience all I have set down as settled or probable. I prefer to hold probabilities as such, and see no advantage in trying to hold them as certainties, unless additional evidence necessitates it. I want to be free to examine in the light of our present knowledge all ideas handed down to us from the past.” Yes, these were problematic principles for either a leader or a follower, but possibly ideal for an explorer or a scientist.

As soon as Amasa looked up from Theodore’s printed words, Towner commented, “I used to think very much that way myself, years ago. But then we experienced such confusion, distrust, and conflict at Berlin Heights. I felt these agonies within myself, and saw them all around me. Theodore’s words are but an expression of the views I imbibed from spiritualistic leaders twenty years ago. After I turned away from them to Christianity, it took ten years for me to get washed and purged clean enough to be considered fit to join the community, and that was right. While in the main consenting to the freedom of thought set forth in Theodore’s five propositions as good and desirable in respect to things in general, there are for me some exceptions. My faith in the saving power of Christ I do not want to reconsider. If this be bigotry or cant, I want more of it rather than less, for by it peace has come to me.

“If we should accept Theodore as our leader with his present views and tendencies of thinking, the step would be hailed with derisive shouts by all that class of freethinking Spiritualists and others, who regard the Oneida Community as the last remaining bulwark of faith, or ‘Godology’ as they call it. They would instinctively greet it as the fulfillment of their prophecies that the second generation is sure to depart from the narrowness and bigotry of its founder, the greatest tyrant in thought and morals now living, as they say, and made so by his theology. I do not think it would be a good thing to give them this occasion for rejoicing. Yet, I cannot criticize him, either to you, or to myself. I respect Theodore’s position, as I myself stood there at one time, and like him I have become uncomfortable with some of the ordinances of his father. How, I constantly ask myself, can we be true to the Perfectionist faith, yet not be imprisoned by every arbitrary stricture that served well in the past, but may serve poorly in the future.” 

To Amasa’s surprise, Towner’s face showed profound sadness, as if this usually ebullient man were about to weep. If this is a rebel, it is an unusually thoughtful one. Sensing that Harriet Noyes was about to speak, Amasa turned toward her, expecting condemnation of anyone who might criticize her one and only son. Yet she seemed to feel compassion for Towner, a mood he did not expect from this normally stern woman, but then her words gave illumination. “You, James, have nearly completed your journey from confusion to faith, and I do not begrudge you your occasional argument with my husband. You, at least, are very open about your feelings, rather than hiding them, as so many others do. I hope and expect that my son will complete his own voyage to perfect certainty soon, and until then his father must remain father of us all.”

She then changed the subject abruptly, lecturing Amasa on what he must immediately do, to drive his investigation forward. She specifically ordered him to seek out James Vail, and interrogate him about the fire that had been set only a few yards from where he sat. He should also interrogate Harriet Worden about Vail, not believing everything she said, but provoking her to reveal information. She pointed toward the other industrial buildings of the community, and urged him to ask questions of any and sundry of the residents and workers.

Sensing that he had outworn his welcome in the printing office, he waved farewell to the two young ladies, who were now busy printing copies of the Putnam chorus, and gave Towner a modest salute. The first Oneidans he encountered were too busy to talk, but he soon came upon young Pip, who with three other boys was running down a little hill, one at a time, riding a broom, as if it were a horse.

“Mr. Blodgett!” Pip exclaimed. “How are we doing?” Amasa gave a friendly but noncommittal answer, from which Pip realized that Amasa had no idea what he was trying to do. “Oh, yes sir, I, Pierrepont Noyes am practicing to play the part of General Israel Putnam, when he rode his horse down a steep hill, in Greenwich, Connecticut, to escape the filthy British. There will be a contest later today, to see which of us boys get to do this for the performance on Sunday. We will be free!” The other boys shouted the same slogan, and Amasa saluted them before walking onward.

A few minutes later Amasa found Pat Mahoney sitting on a pile of logs and resting. Apparently the energy he had invested in telling everybody about his heroism had been exhausted, and Pat seemed subdued, even sullen. To get the man talking, Amasa asked which of the Oneida community seemed most appreciative of his bravery, and he rattled off a list, beginning with Father Noyes, second listing Harriet Noyes who of course appreciated that her beloved printing facility had not been damaged, then several other names including James Vail. That stimulated Amasa to ask where he could find Vail, and he began walking in the direction Mahoney pointed.

He met several other community members, and asked each one where James Vail might be found. Many had no idea, but others pointed in this direction or that, sending Amasa hither and yon, until his legs were quite tired and he had still not caught up with Vail. “Vail to no avail,” he said to himself, then hobbled toward the Mansion House for lunch. He did not know how Vail looked, but someone explained to him that unlike most adult men who wore full beards, or Newhouse who was clean shaven, Vail shaved just his chin, having a moustache and long sideburns. He walked all around the dining hall, then throughout the building, and circled it outside, seeing no man by that description. Chuckling, he remembered that Sewell Newhouse had said they should meet again, so he headed to the immense factory building where the traps were manufactured, and found Newhouse in his office.

“Well, Amasa, we have not had a chance to chat since that horrible attack someone directed at you, misusing one of my traps. A terrible thing, an ambush by the devils who seek to destroy our community.” In a series of awkward gestures he welcomed Amasa. His mouth smiled, but not his eyes. His right arm reached toward Amasa’s left shoulder, as if to give comfort but achieving only a bump. Both his hands grasped Amasa’s right hand, in what was intended to be a prayerful handshake, but felt more like the closing of the jaws of a trap. “I devoutly hope this attack inspires you ever more vigorously to hunt down the perpetrator.”

Apparently aware that he himself would be the first suspect, given that his own name was on the intended murder weapon, Newhouse pointed to the ledger on the table, listing recent customers of Oneida’s trap business. There right between businesses in Salem, Oregon, and Burlington, Vermont, was the name of a local person who had bought one trap, John Mears of Hamilton College.

Now Newhouse’s eye lit up. “What’s in a name? You will recall Shakespeare’s comment, ‘That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.’ I would put it the other way: That which we call a skunk cabbage by any other name would smell as sour. As the supreme engineer of these mechanical wonders we call animal traps, I am quite capable of thinking through many kinds of process that might trap the truth, so if you don’t mind, my dear Amasa, let me catalog some possibilities.” Now both the smile and the eyes cooperated in expressing enthusiasm.

“Yes, I myself could have been the perpetrator. I have access to thousands of traps, and could easily have put one inside my satchel, where nobody would have noticed me carrying it into your bedroom. I could have written the name Mears here in the ledger to throw you off the scent, whether of rose or skunk cabbage. I could have counted upon you to dismiss the idea I was guilty, simply because you are used to complicated puzzles, and murderers do not usually write their names upon the murder weapon. So, how does that sound?”

It was Amasa’s turn to smile with his lips but not his eyes. Newhouse continued: “But suppose you wish to consider the slim chance I was, nonetheless, the perpetrator. What would my motive have been? I see three possibilities.

“First, it is well known that I of all people at Oneida am most dedicated to keeping our faith and our way of life exactly as they have been since we moved here from New England. I could have set the trap on your bed not to hurt you, but to motivate you. I could not have known you would have gone to your room in total darkness, either so late or lacking a candle. The trap could have been a message, telling you to do your job of investigating, well and swiftly.

“Second, after our original chat and how chummy you seemed to be with Towner during our croquet game, I could have seen you as just one more additional threat to our unity. You even predicted to me that Oneida might abandon its dedication to Perfection! So by setting the trap, I might have intended to kill you or frighten you away, indeed indifferent to which form of your departure resulted.

“Third, perhaps the opposite of the first two possibilities might be the correct one, that I am the Judas of Oneida. The economic success of this community was achieved not by the teachings of John Humphrey Noyes, but by the traps of Sewell Newhouse! Perhaps I do not feel I have been given sufficient credit for the prosperity and thus the innovation that we enjoy.”

Tilting his head back, and half closing his eyes, Newhouse contemplated Amasa as the older man pondered his words. “No, Amasa, none of these three possibilities is true. I am far too clever a designer to have left anything to chance, and by chance you survived the attack. I may seem impulsive at times, but only when I have already thought through all aspects of the situation, before designing my reactions to events. But if I was not the perpetrator, then who was? Shall we play a clever game? I will name a few members of the community whom you have come to know, and you tell me why each might have a motive to harm our community, and, by extension, a man such as yourself who now intends to help it.”

Amasa thought rapidly. If he played Newhouse’s game, he might say things, which, if repeated to the person in question, would cause hostility toward him. He could make Newhouse swear not to repeat any of their discussion, and then if that pact were violated, there would be even more reason to suspect Newhouse himself. The trap designer does seem to be a clever man, and certainly knows well the people of his community, so his comments about Amasa’s theories could be informative. So, he asked Newhouse to promise confidentiality, and the trap maker spoke the names of seven people Amasa had come to know rather well in these few days: Harriet Noyes, Theodore Noyes, Pierrepont Noyes, James W. Towner, John Cragin, Lillie Bailey, and Harriet Worden.

“Harriet Noyes?” Amasa cleared his throat. “We might think she was still angry about her husband’s relationships with other women, indeed a dozen or more other women. Yet, his practices did save her from additional painful pregnancies ending only in miscarriage. She married him only after becoming converted to his Perfectionism, and she has shown great love of the community’s publishing accomplishments. Thus, if she has any real motive at all, for performing any of the apparently hostile deeds, then she may merely have been expressing her concern with the falling away from faith of other members. Perhaps she sought to frighten them back into their unity of faith.”

Newhouse rocked his head to either side, perhaps expressing ambivalence toward these ideas. Amasa continued: “Theodore Noyes, the only child of Harriet Noyes who survived, may have felt resentment that he was not allowed to ascend to the leadership position here at Oneida, or resentment about the radical conditions under which he was raised, or even religious opposition to the teachings of the community, which he rather obviously does not fully share. But you also named Pierrepont Noyes. How could a mere boy be responsible?”

Now Newhouse returned to his original unsympathetic smile. “I mentioned Pierrepont because I saw you talking with him at length, and perhaps he merely represents the many other children of John Humphrey Noyes. Oh, Amasa, did it not strike you that many of the early signs that we were under attack could have been a child’s pranks? We call him Pip, which denies he is a serious person. Yet he and I have talked on numerous occasions about trap manufacture, in which he seems to have a serious interest. We might wish that Pip is the culprit, because we could easily dissuade him from further action against the community. But consider his position. He is smart enough to understand that since people like Theodore and Towner have been disagreeing with Father Noyes, our way of life is in danger. But suppose that we dissolved the system of complex marriage we currently possess, what happens to his mother? She cannot marry his father, John Humphrey Noyes, because he already has a wife. She would either marry Abram Burt, the father of Pip’s half-brother, Ormond, or James Vail, the father of Pip’s half-sister, Stella. Where would Pip be then?”

Amasa frowned, shrugged, and shifted to the next suspect Newhouse had named. “James Towner seems to me a serious person, but conflicted in many ways. He had belonged to an earlier and far less successful community, Berlin Heights, which apparently was very chaotic and exactly fit the definition of a free love commune, no rules at all guiding relations between men and women. On the one hand, he seems to respect the greater control over erotic relations here at Oneida, yet to chafe at being dominated by the decisions in that realm of Father Noyes. When I spoke with him earlier today, I sense he stood half way between John Humphrey Noyes and Theodore Noyes, wanting less control than the former, and more control than the latter. I gather he brought a dozen or so followers with him from Berlin Heights, and perhaps he imagines himself taking the place of John Humphrey Noyes, and supreme father of this community.”

“Yes, Amasa, your points are cogent. It seems very unlikely to me that Towner could succeed here at Oneida, after failing at Berlin Heights, and I do not like the man at all. But then there are a few wilds animals I do not like − forgive me for not naming them − yet I try to think from their perspective when designing traps to kill them. If you did not know already, let me tell you that Towner is unstable but very capable. He was a clergyman at one time, then became an attorney, two professions with a mix of similarities and differences. Well over a decade ago, long before he joined our community, he served as our attorney in some cases involving defectors who wanted to steal some of our wealth, rather than admit they owned nothing from their time with us. If he were the main enemy of our community, he would be a formidable foe indeed. His criticism is harmful, and he may split us apart, but precisely because he has a chance of accomplishing that, I do not think he would also be planning violence.”

At this point, Amasa needed to be reminded of the names of the remaining suspects: John Cragin, Lillie Bailey, and Harriet Worden. “Well, as you and I saw in the incomplete mutual criticism, John Cragin seems to harbor resentment over his treatment a decade ago, when the woman he loved, Ann Eliza van Velzer, was ordered to have a child by another man. It seems possible he has not gotten over that anger, yet perhaps Lillie Bailey is in love with him. That puts her in a difficult position. One the one hand, to consummate her love for John Cragin, she may need Father Noyes to leave the scene. On the other hand, she needs John Cragin to get over his anger and forget Ann Eliza. Truth to tell, we do not really know how John Cragin and Lillie Bailey feel about each other, or what plans they share when they are alone, beyond their bookkeeping tasks.”

Without waiting for comments from Newhouse, Amasa addressed the last suspect, Harriet Worden. “Pip’s mother seems in many ways the most attractive woman of her generation in the community. Some others are beautiful, but she is also artistic and has a lively sense of humor. Clearly, she is very intelligent, and she may use that talent to plan ways to become liberated, perhaps imagining that she could become like a princess, adored by all the men, as so many women seem still to adore Father Noyes. If I remember correctly, the father of her little girl is James Vail, although I have yet to meet him, and he is said to be a somewhat violent man, an accusation not yet proven in my mind. So, Mr. Newhouse, what about all the other people you did not name who might be suspects, beginning with Pat Maloney who parades around like a hero, claiming to have saved Oneida from a fire disaster?”

“What about yourself, Amasa?” Newhouse was clearly playing with him. “To be sure, Father Noyes invited you here, but who recommended you? I do not recall. Perhaps you are really an agent of Professor Mears! You may not even be aware of the fact. You have a reputation for solving heinous crimes at other communal societies, yet most of our competitors have gone out of business. Perhaps without even knowing it, you sabotage the communities you visit, by the very act of asking questions. You stimulate doubts and divisions, causing members to become suspicious of each other, and aggravating any wounds the community has already suffered.” Amasa turned to go. “Oh, my dear man, please do not take my words too harshly. We are at a difficult point in our history, and any injection of greater instability worries me.”

Feeling the full weight of his years, Amasa returned to his bedroom for a nap, then awoke to hear musical instruments tuning up. He went down to the main meeting room, and found a half dozen musicians preparing their instruments, and taking direction from Harriet Worden, at the piano. “Oh, Mr. Blodgett, you are just in time to be our audience for this rehearsal. Please take a seat. I selected some music we have played before, as the right introduction for the Putnam play, but we have not played it for a while, and need practice. This is the overture to _Fra Diavolo_ by Daniel François Esprit Auber. The title character is a bandit, rather than a general in our revolutionary war, but the exuberant spirit is exactly right. Please take your seat, and we shall begin.”

It began with a rhythm on a drum, followed by a dance melody on piano and violin, as least as this small group played it. Ta-dum, ta-dum, ta-dum. Then a horn introduced a kind of gallop, and Amasa imagined riding around on a horse to the rhythm of the music. All the instruments combined in a brief storm, then the gallop resumed, followed by another thunderous storm, gallop, storm, gallop. He now imagined Putnam riding his horse down that Greenwich hill, with the British in hot but stumbling pursuit. The violin alternated with horn, driving to the climax.

As the musicians rested for a moment, Harriet Worden explained to Amasa, “Of course the title of the opera means, in English, _The Brother of the Devil_. But the hero is a poor soldier named Lorenzo, who wishes to marry Zerline, daughter of the innkeeper, and who is trying to capture Diavolo. So the music represents a chase on horseback, any such chase, or an heroic romp of any kind.” Amasa commented that it certainly sounded like a gallop to him. “Yes, and in the play Putnam escapes the British on his horse, but by tricking them rather than simply escaping, and this does not have anything to do with his famous escape down the steepest hill in Connecticut. I must say, the drama does not match the real history, as I know it, but that is not important, because it is the spirit we need: exuberant, uplifting, lively.”

Again they played, and this time Amasa imagined Putnam chasing Fra Diavolo on horseback, which soon shifted into an image that he, himself, was chasing whatever brother of the Devil was seeking to steal Oneida’s precious traditions. Ta-dum, ta-dum, ta-dum. Gallup and storm.

Regaining some of his energy listening to Auber’s rousing music, Amasa ambled along the hallways of the Mansion House, inspecting the many activities going on in this or that room. At one place he saw some of the older children sewing turkey feathers onto strips of cloth, and it took him a minute to recognize that they were making imitation Indian headdresses, at least as these young folk imagined they might look. So, the Putnam play seems to have a native war party in it, as well as a chorus about freedom, and a wild ride down a hillside.

Sitting across from each other at a small table, James Towner and William Hinds were talking excitedly, and making drawings on a large piece of paper. Around a corner, John Cragin and Pat Mahoney were doing almost the same thing, but this time Amasa approached near enough to hear what they were discussing. Cragin was making Mahoney repeat his story about the fruit house fire, and asking questions about tiny details. Theodore Noyes was sitting alone, reading a book. Two small boys were running around, pretending their hands were pistols and shooting at each other, until one of the ladies would make them stop. But as soon as that lady had walked away, they would begin their gun game all over again, until another lady pacified them temporarily.

Time passed swiftly, and still rather exhausted from his long walk that day he found himself eating supper near sundown with the others, listening to them gossip about the day’s work, or the upcoming Putnam festival, but not asking any more questions. He may even have dozed a bit, sitting in a chair in the corner, until he decided it was time to head for bed. His footsteps took him near the main door, and he was just turning toward the stairway when a man just outside shouted “Fire! Fire!”

Instantly, people were running in all directions, and Amasa found himself outdoors, watching in astonishment as a huge barn, hardly a hundred yards across the lawn, was engulfed in flames. Hay, wood, horses, everything was ablaze. Women hastened to take charge of the children, talking them indoors, or standing with them at a distance. Men rushed forward, then back away from the flames. One tried to open the main door, but fled in failure. Another did get two horses out, but no more.

Amasa saw no way he could help, but began looking this way and that, for any clue of how the fire had started. He found himself standing with a few of the boys, who were shouting at each other: “Don’t you hope they saved Barnard?” “Was Judy saved?” “Jenny got out but was burned!” “What about Prince?” Only when he heard the name Prince, did he realize, with some relief, that the boys were naming their favorite horses, not people.

Pat Mahoney ran past, stumbling and spinning in confusion, shouting something to the effect that he could not stop this fire the way he had stopped the earlier one. “By God,” he exclaimed, “the whole barn is on fire! I tried to save the horses! I tried, I really did!” Two of the men who had been unable to open the main barn door grabbed Mahoney, and at first Amasa thought they were preventing him from running back into danger. Then from their shouts he realized they suspected him of having set this blaze.

Amasa crossed the road to one side of the barn, holding a hand above his eyes to guard against sparks, and keeping his distance, even as burning pieces of straw flew out of the conflagration in all directions, and the heat drove wind up and away from the barn. Given his acute sense of smell, Amasa thought he detected meat roasting, and he shouted to one of the men, “Are many horses still in there?”

“Two dozen, maybe!” the man shouted back. “Lord have mercy upon them! There is nothing we can do.”

As he slowly circled the blaze, Amasa looked for any hint of how the fire had been set, but the best he could determine was that the flames were concentrated in the hayloft, and thus could not possibly have been put out, even by a rainstorm. Then, with a deafening roar, the barn roof collapsed, shooting flames high into the sky, and catapulting a few sticks of wood in the direction of the Mansion House. Men immediately stomped out their flames, or kicked the sticks back toward the barn. The disaster would have been vastly greater, had the barn been closer, or men had not quickly moved a couple of wagons out of the area, since they could have served as stepping stones for the flames to reach other buildings.

Seeing John Humphrey Noyes standing with Theodore and Harriet Noyes, Amasa approached them. Father Noyes was speaking quickly to his son, but in a whisper, such that his words were drowned out by the roar of the flames and the shouts of the community. Harriet Noyes turned angrily, saying, “Blodgett, why have you been so slow in your work? You could have prevented this horror!”

Theodore ran away on some errand, and Father Noyes grabbed Amasa by his collar and spoke to him in a quiet but agitated voice. “You must help us! Will there be other sabotage? My son is setting up guards, everywhere, but especially around the Mansion House, to prevent more arson. Whatever happens, you must stay with us. I fear that this horrible fire is just the surface of a much greater evil. I do have a plan if things get worse, but it would be surrender. We have a place at Niagara Falls, just over the border into Canada, where I could flee, but I am no coward. I would not run away, except to save the community. We have not discussed this plan in public, so do not mention it to anyone, but you must be ready to act, perhaps to help us escape, or later to bring us back after the Devil has been defeated.”

Despite the horror of the flames that lit the smoky sky orange and flickered across their faces, Amasa and Father Noyes quickly analyzed the situation logically. The attacks against Oneida had become deadly, now for horses if not yet for people. Several community elders would lead teams to scout for the villains, and defend in different ways against their evil. No matter what anyone thinks, Amasa should stay at Oneida at least many more days, to be the one force operating outside the community but for its benefit. This Amasa then promised to do. They arranged to meet late the next afternoon, at the cottage beside the lake, where no one could interrupt a more deliberative discussion. “Mr. Blodgett, please forgive my wife’s anger. She is most dedicated of all Oneidans, and this fire is a great shock for her. If any faithful member of the community treats you disrespectful during these hard times, please do not take offense, but take action to help that person, and all the rest of us.”

Returning to the Mansion House, Amasa stood for a while, helpless like everyone else, then sat on a porch step, thinking about how fragile human creations were in the forces of nature. His mind drifted to an even more disastrous fire that had struck a religious institution earlier that year, a Roman Catholic college in Indiana, named Notre Dame. He remembered reading in a newspaper how many students formed a bucket brigade, in a futile attempt to halt the destruction of the main building. Others rushed in to save books, 25,000 of which were destroyed, along with more than a dozen pianos. It was said that the building’s doom came when the dome collapsed, and a statue of the Virgin Mary weighing a ton, crashed down. He tried to balance in his mind the value of a living horse against that of a man-made piano, and could not complete the calculation.

His memory recalled reading about the Great Chicago Fire back in 1871, and the Portland, Maine, fire of 1866. But the fire most clearly etched in his memory happened in 1854 at the North American Phalanx, while he was there trying to help solve the MacDonald mystery. It was neither in a barn, or the residences, but the mill that was the economic heart of that commune. For an instant Amasa laughed, recalling the irony that so much stored food had fallen on the huge steam engine in the basement, that it was protected and survived undamaged, even as the building above it became rubble and ashes. He then thought of the irony that the greatest act of heroism at this socialist utopia was when Mr. Sears saved the account books, which seemed more appropriate for capitalism than socialism.

Amasa’s mind drifted back to another fire he had not seen with his own eyes, also at a commune, Brook Farm in Massachusetts, back in 1846. Oh, how often the enemies of a community seek to burn it out of existence! In that case, the building that was destroyed had not yet been fully completed, but as with the North American Phalanx, the fire was costly to purse and to optimism, causing the failure of the entire social experiment. 

Like the North American Phalanx, Brook Farm was Fourierist, and the building that burned would have been its Phalanstery, a communal building designed by Charles Fourier, the French philosopher who had inspired the movement, but had long since passed away. If God let fire destroy the great barn of Oneida, and the main building at Notre Dame, who can really say that He loves believers any more than the atheists of the Phalanx and Brook Farm?

Amasa thought back to the terrible secrets that lay behind the two fires, eight years apart, that both took him so long to discover. Yes, he had solved these mysteries, but not before they destroyed the Fourierist movement in America. Was the same tragedy happening again, now, just over eight days rather than eight years? 

The fire in the Oneida barn burned low, and except for a few men standing guard around it, everyone staggered to bed, to catch a few fitful hours of sleep, before assessing the damage and its causes in the morning.


	7. Premonitions

At dawn, the ruins of the barn were still smoldering in some places, as men were shoveling through ashes in search of chains and metal tools, while a few of the older boys were helping them. A stench of roasted horseflesh filled the air. While community women were setting breakfast out on tables, few members seemed to have any appetite. Amasa certainly did not.

He noticed four men marching very close together across a field, headed straight toward the Mansion House, and intuition told him to meet them half way. As he got closer, he saw that three were side by side, the ones on the outside holding the ends of a rope, that tied the third man’s arms together behind his back. He did not recognize them, but he soon recognized the fourth man, a few paces behind them. It was Sewell Newhouse, carrying a hunting rifle, specifically a Winchester ‘73 lever-action repeating rifle. “Blodgett, we have no use for you,” he exclaimed as they passed. “Go home to your rocking chair, and leave us to manage our own business.”

Amasa paused, let them get some distance toward the main buildings, then followed. They took their captive inside to an office near the entrance, where Theodore Noyes joined them, then shut the door. People kept arriving, filling the halls and nearby rooms. 

A few minutes later, Theodore came out, went to another office then came back toward the entrance, accompanied by Pat Mahoney. Theodore turned and spoke to the crowd, shouting to be heard by everyone. “We must thank Pat for doing his best to save the horses, and apologize if any of us have doubted his honesty. He is an excellent watchman, who found himself in an impossible situation, and we should admire the bravery and self control he has shown. We look forward to many more years of good work and mutual respect!” Realizing that Pat had just been exonerated, and ashamed they had ever doubted him, the community members began applauding. This brought a smile to Pat’s face. He bowed, muttering something about needing rest, and departed.

Next Theodore found his father and mother, escorting them to the office, before searching far and wide throughout the building, then returning with Harriet Worden. They disappeared into the office, and just then Amasa noticed Pip standing nearby, with an expression of horror on his face. They heard the voices of both men and women shouting behind the closed door of the office, then suddenly Harriet Worden burst into the hallway, grabbed her son by the arm, and practically dragged him outside, shrieking what sounded like, “Curse you, Sewell!”

A few minutes later, the two men Amasa did not know led their prisoner away, silently. He imagined they were going to lock him in a store room, away from the Mansion House. It did not take imagination to deduce that he had confessed to starting the barn fire the night before, but he had no idea who the man was or what motive he had. He began wandering in search of someone to ask.

In the upstairs sitting room, he found John Cragin and Lillie Bailey, sitting near the large windows, gazing at the lawn outside and talking. Without any greeting, Amasa sat beside them, and asked what they knew.

“Did you not recognize him,” John asked. When Amasa shook his head, John said, “That was James Vail, the fellow who wrongly claimed some of the horses belonged to him. I keep the records, and know very well he had no right to them. Yes, he had trained them, but they were community horses, for him to use but not to take away. I surmise he became uncontrollably angry, when some of us urged him to leave and take his hot temper away with him, but we would not let him take the horses. Now they are dead, and he faces stiff punishment.”

Before Amasa could fully ponder this sad turn of events, Lillie spoke. “I am not sure how close he still is to Harriet Worden, but of course he is the father of her little daughter.” She sat quietly, thinking, then turned to Amasa. “You do not see Stella with her mother, because she’s just been weaned, and she is being raised collectively in the Children’s House. Children, you know, must not become sticky toward their mothers, nor should the mothers be sticky to their children nor to the fathers of their children. Yet none of us has really achieved perfection yet, so I can only imagine what Harriet can be feeling.”

Amasa reported that Harriet Worden had left the Mansion House with Pip, so she must not be under any suspicion in the arson. He said it looked like Vail had been caught by Sewell Newhouse, who was now talking with community leaders. Given that Newhouse had published a textbook on hunting, for once a teacher actually knew his subject matter.

John Cragin, who usually spoke in a clear and logical manner, stammered a few times, fell silent, then said, “I imagine people will feel this solves Oneida’s problem, that we are no longer in danger. Vail may have been the danger all along, setting the first fire that Pat put out, then this second more horrible blaze. Perhaps he acted alone. If he was in the pay of Professor Mears, he will admit the fact, seeking a lighter prison sentence, and any conspiracy will now come unraveled. But Mr. Blodgett, I beg you not to leave too quickly, or take offense if any of our members are unkind to you. Whether the truth may be, it would be hazardous to let down our guard too soon.”

“Yes, Mr. Blodgett,” Lillie said, “we have come to trust you. We did not expect you to work miracles, but I cannot guess how other people feel. My intuition tells me that danger remains. Please, you do the same.”

Amasa told them he appreciated their trust and mentioned his frantic conversation with Father Noyes the night before, at the peak of the fire. He explained that he had arranged to meet Father Noyes later that afternoon at the lakeside cottage, to discuss the situation in a cool mood of detachment. At that moment, the sound of another round of applause cane from downstairs, so he went to see what was happening.

The crowd was moving outdoors, so he followed them. When they looked up, so did he. Standing on the balcony over the entrance were Father and Mrs. Noyes, their son Theodore, and Sewell Newhouse. Theodore spoke: “We now know with absolute certainty that the barn fire was set by James Vail, well known to have a violent temper and poor discipline. He is being taken by wagon to the Madison County sheriff, who will hold him in the jail for trial. Vain and empty-headed, he had flaunted our collective wealth as if it were his own, to attract a woman in a nearby town, and lost her affection when she learned he was penniless. His lust for her became lust for revenge, and he set the fire in the Arcade which Pat Mahoney bravely extinguished. In his second attempt, he set the fire in a chute leading directly to the hay loft, and even Pat’s heroism could save only one horse. We believe he was not part of a greater conspiracy, but naturally we will work with the sheriff to make sure every scrap of truth becomes known.”

Father Noyes, leaned over the railing and spoke with such excitement that even his weak voice was clearly audible: “Lord give us thankful hearts and family unity.” Many in the crowd repeated these words, each in his or her own cadence, so Amasa guessed it was an Oneidan motto.

Theodore raised his had for silence. “We thank God, and in this moment of sorrow mixed with joy, we thank his servant, Sewell Newhouse, who was able to capture Vail just as he was nearing escape!” Father Noyes and Harriet Noyes each hugged Newhouse, who seemed rather moved by their outpouring of affection, despite his normal reserve.

The community cheered, and some of the men with loudest voices shouted the name of Newhouse. Too quiet to hear, Father Noyes spoke with his son, and then Theodore announced to everybody: “Our terrible ordeal is over! Light has vanquished darkness, even as the flames consumed all sin in Oneida, Father Noyes declares. We can feel complete faith in our security now. A few of the men will clear the ruin of the old barn, and build a new one in its place. The rest of us can prepare for the festival this coming Sunday, and use it to celebrate another long stride toward Perfection!” He looked back at his father, who nodded. Theodore raised his hands toward heaven, and yelled, “Let us go, brothers, go!”

Many other men’s voices, with mounting excitement, repeated, “Let us go, brothers, go!” Soon their baritone thunder were joined by soprano lightning, “Let us go, sisters, go!” A storm of human voices, having no order or organization gradually coalesced, and Amasa realized the entire community was singing:

“We will build us a dome On our beautiful plantation, And we’ll all have one home, And one family relation; We’ll battle with the wiles Of the dark world of Mammon, And return with its spoils To the home of our dear ones. Let us go, brothers, go!”

Feeling very far separated from this communal unity, Amasa Blodgett began to walk away, resisting the impulse to run, then forced himself to return to the edge of the crowd, circle it, and gaze in admiration at the joyous faces. His thoughts were scattered, yet he sensed failure in his own spirit, irrelevance, fatigue. But then another feeling arose in his heart: doubt. All too many times in his life, he had seen friends grasp too anxiously at slim hopes, overcome by joy when it was really time to think deeply and analyze a situation coolly. Yes, James Vail had probably set the barn fire, and probably did so alone. But was he the only danger? Unlikely. Yet no one other than Amasa seemed touched by misgivings, and they continued to sing.

“Now love’s sunshine begun, And the spirit-flowers are blooming; And the feeling that we’re one All our hearts is perfuming; Towards one home let us all Set our faces together Where true love shall dwell In peace and joy forever. Let us go, brothers, go!”

While the community sang with one voice, Amasa gradually settled on a destination for his footsteps, the library. Perhaps he should return to Zoar, as soon as practical, or perhaps he should deeply study the information he had, seeking insights. Either way, he should tidy up the small mess he had left on one of the library tables. Soon he was busy looking through the notes he had made while reading. All the material about Professor Mears at Hamilton College seemed so completely irrelevant now, not to mention the Puck cartoon in the scrapbook. Charles Guiteau’s book, _The Truth_ , seemed to lack what its title named. Then he noticed a book in the pile, _The Berean_ by John Humphrey Noyes, identical to the one Harriet Noyes had shown him at the printing office. More than thirty years old, it belonged to the early days of the community, yet perhaps it had something to tell him. Rather than simply open it at random, as in bibliomancy, which is divination by interpreting a random verse from the bible, he meditated for a moment, and a melody came to mind, Old Hundredth. Did this melody require him to praise God, from whom all blessing flow? Or did Old Hundredth inspire him make a joyful noise unto the Lord? No, not this time. It told him to look on page 100 of _The Berean_.

How apt! He found himself in the midst of a chapter about the origin of evil. Yes, it was about Satan, called on page 99 a superhuman, wicked spirit. While 99 was not quite so scary a number as 666, it also seemed to identify a great beast. Amasa’s command of the German language, learned well but not perfectly during his many years at Zoar, gave him the witticism, nine-nine, nein-nein, no-no. What could page 100 add to this dismal drumbeat? With great difficulty, wading through fine print and scholarly references, Amasa discovered that the hundredth page was making a remarkable pair of claims.

First of all, Satan, the Devil, was not, as some supposed, a fallen angel. No, the angels had fallen just before the Great Flood, and probably those fallen angels were the ancestors of the people who sought perfection at Oneida. From that perspective, Oneidans were formerly fallen angels, now ascending back to their rightful place in Heaven. No one could gain Perfection, who did not already possess it. Perfection must be discovered within oneself.

Second, Satan was not a creation of God, not a creation of any kind. Rather, Satan was an eternal evil principle, existing outside the Lord’s jurisdiction, and outside the human heart. Thus it was quite possible for fallen angels to climb up out of the mud, cast off evil entirely, and achieve Perfection. Amasa looked up from his reading and remembered something from his wide travels among religious communities. Although he had not a single theologian’s bone in his body, he had been fascinated years before to hear about the beliefs of the Manichaeans, that life was a struggle between equal powers of light and darkness, without assuming that God was greater than Satan.

Closing the book, he pondered the words from the Sermon on the Mount, that sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. Yes, there is no need to add to the troubles of today, but at the same time there can be no doubt that each day does have its own quota of evil. One meaning of the words might be that we can escape evil completely, but only by leaving this material Earth, on which lives are lived in a series of days, and ascend to Heaven. But Oneida believed that Perfection was possible here and now.

Perhaps James Vail was a fallen angel, not a minion of the Devil, but if the real enemy of Oneida was evil incarnate, it would be far greater than Vail, not merely a veil to cover the face, like the one Moses removed when he spoke directly with the Lord, but the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Amasa gathered up his papers, putting them in the leather case he habitually carried, and left the library.

Soon he was standing again near the burned barn, watching the men work. Some were removing the rubbish, even horses’ corpses, but two others were already measuring the perimeter of the wreckage with a tape measure. A third was taking notes, and shouting numbers back and forth with the two who were acting as surveyors. One of the rubbish removers was not a man but a boy, and Amasa walked over to see who he was. Of course it was Pip. Other boys his age, and even much older ones, were wasting their time elsewhere, while young Pierrepont Noyes was helping the grown-up men, as best he could, and earning their respect. But respect for Amasa seemed sorely lacking.

He overheard two of the men joking, and recognized his own name in their quick conversation. Another made a gesture at him, as if to wave him away. Another, in mock politeness, urged him to take a seat under the trees near the Mansion House, and have the kind of a nap belonging to an old, useless man. Amasa tried to tell himself the men were not naturally nasty, but fatigued and not yet fully recovered from the horror of the fire.

Then he noticed Theodore walking toward them, a pitchfork over his shoulder. He tipped his hat to Amasa and smiled, then began digging here and there in the ashes, looking for something. The pitchfork dug up several objects, which Theodore inspected, then dropped back into the ruins. Finally he seemed to find what he was seeking, a rather large black object, which he picked up with the pitchfork, and carried out of the ashes. He walked directly to Amasa, showed him that the object was the lower leg of a horse with the hoof still attached, and invited Amasa to accompany him to George Cragin’s office.

They did not speak as they walked, so Amasa pondered Theodore and the ghoulish object he was carrying on the pitchfork. The only son of Harriet Noyes possessed some of her crankiness, but seemed especially volatile or indecisive. Was he the assistant of his father, or an opponent? He did not seem to accept Oneida’s central doctrines, yet had no other ideology to replace them with. Since both he and George Cragin had medical training, was there some reason they needed to inspect the cause of death of the poor horse that had lost this hoof, as well as its life? That was implausible, given that the fire had been the obvious cause of death.

George Cragin seemed ready for them when they arrived at his office, and Amasa immediately saw what the two men planned to do. Doctor Cragin had already cleared the small round table, with its veneer symbol of eight smaller circles inside a big one, representing Oneida’s unity. Theodore carefully placed the horse’ hoof in the center of the table, and Amasa wondered why they did not protect the table with a cloth or dinner plate, from the filth. Perhaps the table added spiritual power by being in direct contact with the object to be analyzed with the spirit pendulum.

Theodore motioned for Amasa to sit beside him, on chairs at the opposite side of the room, while George got to work with his pendulum, whispering the questions to himself and apparently not distracted as Theodore began to talk. “Mr. Blodgett, it seems very likely that Newhouse captured the arsonist, in the person of James Vail, and that Vail will tell the truth to the sheriff, in hopes of a lighter punishment. But there may be aspects of this terrible situation that we do not yet know, and the hoof may have absorbed some of the evil spirit that caused the death of the horse. I have not made up my own mind about the reliability of spirit pendula as a means of divination, even as I am uncertain about the Divine more generally.”

Amasa encouraged Theodore to say more about his spiritual beliefs. The son of Oneida’s messiah waved his hand in a gesture of indecision, and said, “I think there is conclusive evidence of the existence of a spiritual world, inhabited by spiritual beings. I think it extremely probable that these beings have lived as men and women in this world. This belief was supported by our recent experience communicating with the spirit of George’s mother, Mary, whose skull rests on the bookcase yonder. However, it is not clear to me if she dwells in the Heaven postulated by Christians, or indeed if the spirit we contacted was really Mary in her previous life. The question of spirit identity I do not think is fully settled, but our continued existence in the spiritual world is so highly probable that it constantly seems to me a fact, and furnishes a satisfactory ground for action. I think I believe it as fully as any one in the Community.”

Theodore paused, cleared his throat, then continued. “By action I mean two things. First, we should be optimistic that we ourselves shall live again in an afterlife, and thus do not need to be greedy to gain all the material pleasure of this world in selfish competition against other people. Second, we would be wise to act in accordance with widely accepted standards of morality, lest we lose the right to enter Heaven, just as devout Christians warn. If the assumptions about an afterlife on which those two rules of action rest are wrong, we do not lose much by obeying their implications. But that line of thought does not tell me whether to trust the results of George’s examination of the burned hoof with his spirit pendulum. I fully trust George’s good will and refined intellect, but at most he will give us possibilities we can later explore in other ways.”

George was feverishly asking questions of the hoof, and operating the spirit pendulum first with one hand, then the other, then both. After a while he took down from the wall a bent, forked tree branch, that had been carefully cleaned and Amasa recognized as a dowsing device, used to find water by spiritual means. After working with it for a while George returned to his trusty pendulum. Feeling somewhat irritated by all this mystical behavior, Amasa asked Theodore what he planned to do during the festival the coming Sunday.

“Well, Mr. Blodgett, I have been brooding about that myself. Having lived for a while in Connecticut, I am quite familiar with the frankly rather disturbing deeds performed by General Israel Putnam in that state, and I am thinking of providing a debate after the drama, raising the question of whether Putnam was really a great leader and a good man, or perhaps the exact opposite. In our library I found a biography of Putnam by Increase Tarbox, a theologian with an odd name but an excellent pedigree. Like me, he completed his advanced education at Yale College, but decades earlier than I did. I am troubled by the fact that the book is more like the idealistic hagiography of a saint, than an objective biography of a soldier. For example, it covers the long winter Putnam was camped near Redding, Connecticut, in a single paragraph, without reporting his controversial actions there. Please don’t ask me to say more, right now, because I am still reading the book and pondering what to say near the conclusion of the festival. But my considered theme will be the extent to which any human being should be worshiped as a hero, whether with or without God’s blessing.”

Finally George put away his mystical tools, and reported his results. “The indications were very weak, but I feel conclusive. The fire was entirely the fault of James Vail, and no one else was involved. I was a little surprised I did not find any connection to the earlier fire at the Arcade, which we have been assuming Vail also set, but probably the dumb horse did not know anything about that. I found no reference to Satan, nor for that matter to Professor Mears, and those signs were far more conclusive. Thus, I am pleased to report that we have no reason to fear further attacks, and indeed our time of trouble may be over. There are always challenges, along our road to perfection, but we can with confidence rebuild the barn, stock it with young horses, and allow Mr. Blodgett to return to his own community at Zoar.”

Amasa thanked George and Theodore for including him in the “séance,” if that was the right word for spiritual communication with a horse’s hoof, but was by no means convinced by the results of the exercise. The two doctors began talking about something else, so he left them to their conversation and returned to gaze again at the burned barn, then took some lunch in the Mansion House. He saw many people he recognized, but none of them smiled and waved hello, as they had done before, but tended to look away, pretending they had not seen him.

Then Lillie Bailey appeared and walked over to him. “Well, Mr. Blodgett, I believe you said you planned to meet with Father Noyes this afternoon at the cottage on the lake. I think I’d better take you there, because it is quite a distance away.” Amasa pointed southward and said he could easily walk the short distance to the lake he had seen there. “No, not Sunset Lake, which is hardly more than a pond, but great Lake Oneida, the largest body of water entirely within the borders of New York state. We leased some land there and built a cottage just south of Fish Creek, which is actually a full sized river, in my estimation. It stands about twelve miles northwest, so it will take us a while to get there, and you would get lost if you tried the journey alone. If we start in a few minutes, and you talk with Father Noyes for two or three hours, it might become late enough to spend the night there, so I suggest you bring a few of your things.”

Amara gathered up a few articles of clothing and personal effects in his bedroom, carrying just one of his bags in addition to his constant companion, his leather tool kit, making sure to include pencils and paper to write down anything complicated Noyes might tell him, or he might observe. By the time he got downstairs and outside, Lillie had driven up in the Whitechapel. She seemed strangely quiet as they rode along, sitting side by side but hardly talking.

Soon they were traveling north on Main Street through the secular town of Oneida. When they reached a cross street named Stone, Lillie became somewhat animated. “Do you see that ornate brick house, Mr. Blodgett? It is called the Farnam Mansion and belongs to Stephen Head Farnam, who monopolizes the hardware business in this area. We have many dealings with him, some good, some bad. In a sense there are three Oneidas, the traditional Indian tribe, our Perfectionist Community, and the hardware business that operates out of this town and provides equipment for farmers far and wide. In recent years, Farnam has been one of the organizers of a gas light company, saying that this invention can illuminate the darkness in a way that surpasses both candles and saints. We believe that our community represents the future of humanity, achieving ever great spiritual perfection. But Farman seems to believe the future belongs to machinery, a world not of humanity but of hardware.” She fell silent, until they reached the lake and turned north.

The scenery was quite beautiful, with many trees growing near the lake, and much of the land still wild. They came to a sandy area on their left, which Lillie explained was named Verona Beach, then to the cottage itself, a two-story house only a few feet from the water. Lillie explained it was called Joppa, and added, “We are not sure why we chose that name, but it is mentioned a dozen times in Acts, the book of the bible that describes the communism of the early Christians.” She unhitched the horse, leading it to a fenced field where it could graze to its heart’s content, that also offered a water trough supplied by the lake.

They found John Humphrey Noyes sitting inside near a window and reading a book, which Amasa could see was _Communistic Societies of the United States_ , a book he knew well because the author, a journalist named Nordhoff, had featured Zoar, in contrast to the minor attention Amasa’s home commune was given in _History of American Socialisms_ by Noyes himself. “Oh, Mr. Blodgett,” Noyes whispered. “I had forgotten you might be meeting with me this afternoon. Since our troubles are over with the arrest of James Vail, perhaps you can return home now. We deeply appreciate your willingness to help, even through in the event you were not in fact helpful.”

Rather than responding directly Amasa asked Noyes what he thought of Nordhoff’s description of Oneida. Before speaking, Noyes opened the book to the page that was an engraving of his own face. “A good likeness, isn’t it? Well, Nordhoff did visit us, and did the best job he could, but the task was really too challenging for him. Two whole pages are taken up with nothing but jokes. Yes, I agree that we are a cheerful community, and laughter can be a sign of perfection, yet readers may not take us seriously enough. These were jokes we ourselves had published, but he did not need to emphasize them. Here, I’ll read a couple that are framed as if they were magazine advertisements. ‘To Jewelers: A single pearl of great price! This inestimable Jewel may be obtained by application to Jesus Christ, at the extremely low price of all that a man hath. To Brokers: Wanted − Any amount of shares of Second-Coming stock, bearing date A. D. 70, or thereabouts, will find a ready market and a high premium at this office.’”

Amasa laughed, then commented that at least the second joke got the right date for the Second Coming, in terms of Oneida’s belief it occurred about 70 A.D. Amasa then asked if the passage in Nordhoff’s book was correct about complex marriage, which he had read several times back in Zoar when his own community was debating how it had been treated by the journalist. Noyes said that it was not inaccurate, but rather brief, implying but not quite saying that relations between the sexes were free love, and not fully explaining his arrangements for selected women to bear the children of selected men, following his stirpiculture method of breeding spiritual advancement into the children.

“Nordhoff says little if anything about amative intercourse, the method we use to encourage intimacy between women and men, without engendering unplanned children or causing exclusive and idolatrous attachments. On stirpiculture you should read my recent _Essay on Scientific Propagation_ , with an appendix by my son Theodore proving our greater health than the general American population. Lillie can give you a copy before you head home tomorrow. Here, before you go back to the Mansion House, perhaps I should explain amative intercourse − no, demonstrate it − so that when you share what you learned during your visit with us, there will be no awkward questions.”

“First of all, I must deal with the criticism that what we do is unnatural. I have no doubt that it is perfectly proper that we should endeavor to rise above ‘nature’ and the destiny of the brutes in this matter. There is no reason why we should not seek and hope for discovery in this direction, as freely as in the development of steam power or the art of printing; and we may rationally expect that He who has promised the ‘good time’ when vice and misery shall be abolished, will at last give us sure light on this darkest of all problems-how to subject human propagation to the control of science.”

Noyes stood, and asked Lillie to stand before him. “We will not remove our clothing in your presence, Mr. Blodgett, so you need not worry about that. Nor will my male organ enter into her female organ, although that is what I shall describe. Think of it this way, that the sexual act consists of three stages. It has a beginning, a middle and an end. Its beginning and most elementary form is the simple presence of the male organ in the female. Then usually follows a series of reciprocal motions. Finally this exercise brings on a reflex nervous action or ejaculatory crisis which expels the seed. Now we insist that this whole process, up to the very moment of emission, is voluntary, entirely under the control of the moral faculty, and can be stopped at any point. In other words the presence and the motions can be continued or stopped at will, and it is only the final orgasm that is automatic or uncontrollable.”

Noyes placed his hands on Lillie’s shoulders, and moved his hips slightly forward. “Now, imagine that my organ has entered hers. This means we are very close to each other, in a spiritual as well as physical sense. The sexual organs have a social function which is distinct from the propagative function; and these functions may be separated practically. We are together, but not yet communicating.”

Noyes then began moving his hips forward and back. “Sexual intercourse, pure and simple, is the conjunction of the organs of union, and the interchange of magnetic influences, or conversation of spirits, through the medium of that conjunction. For several years, since amative intercourse became well established with us, we have assigned older men the responsibility for introducing young ladies to this practice, thereby sharing their experience and their self-control. Perhaps even more important, older women instruct the young men. If, for example, my wife Harriet were engaged with one of the youngest men during amative intercourse, she could instruct him to slow down in his motions, thus extending their pleasurable communication while avoiding the danger of an accidental climax, that with a younger woman might produce pregnancy.”

He moved his hips very slowly now, and paused occasionally. “We something suggest that a young man may experiment with various tactics to avoid climax. Male Continence in its essence is self-control, and that is a virtue of universal importance. One method is to pause and briefly pray, not a prayer that denies the sexual communication, but that elevates it. Do you remember this verse: ‘O my dove, that art in the clefts of the rock, in the secret places of the stairs, let me see thy countenance, let me hear thy voice; for sweet is thy voice, and thy countenance is comely.’ Or these:

“Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair; thou hast doves’ eyes within thy locks: thy hair is as a flock of goats, that appear from mount Gilead. Thy teeth are like a flock of sheep that are even shorn, which came up from the washing; whereof every one bear twins, and none is barren among them. Thy lips are like a thread of scarlet, and thy speech is comely: thy temples are like a piece of a pomegranate within thy locks. Thy neck is like the tower of David builded for an armoury, whereon there hang a thousand bucklers, all shields of mighty men. Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins, which feed among the lilies. Until the day break, and the shadows flee away, I will get me to the mountain of myrrh, and to the hill of frankincense. Thou art all fair, my love; there is no spot in thee.”

Amasa had trouble speaking, given the unusual situation in which he found himself, but admitted he recognized “The Song of Solomon” from the bible.

Noyes removed his hands from Lillie’s shoulders, and held his fists a bit to either side of her waist, and began imitating rowing a boat. “This is a more physical tactic we suggest. The man should pretend he is on a swift-flowing river, just above a waterfall, and must row his boat carefully upstream, not allowing it to crash over the falls − a metaphor for sexual climax − but to remain among the most exciting waters. But what if a man, knowing his own power and limits, should not even approach the crisis, and yet be able to enjoy the presence and the motion indefinitely? If you say that this is impossible, I answer that I know it is possible − nay, that it is easy.”

Noyes returned to his chair near the window, and gestured for Lillie to sit as well. “You have now our whole theory of ‘male continence.’ It consists in analyzing sexual intercourse, recognizing in it two distinct acts, the social and the propagative, which can be separated practically, and affirming that it is best, not only with reference to prudential considerations, but for immediate pleasure, that a man should content himself with the social act, except when he intends procreation.”

A thousand questions filled Amasa’s mind, but somehow he could not voice even just one of them. An awkward silence lasted nearly a minute. Thus, Amasa changed the subject. “Earlier, I was with your son, Theodore, and George Cragin, when they used spiritual means to determine if indeed the danger to Oneida has ended. What is your view?”

Noyes pondered this question, as Lillie rose from her chair and began puttering in the small kitchen in the adjacent room. As if wanting to give himself more time to think, Noyes gestured that they should go outside. Two deck chairs were just outside the window nearest the door, sitting on a wooden platform and not ten feet from the lake. After they had seated, and Noyes paused a while longer, he spoke. “There has always been danger, and there may always be. Perhaps I mentioned to you that we have a very small outpost just over the border into Canada, near Niagara Falls. If I sense that I myself am in great danger, and that the danger imperils the community around me as well, I plan to go there and await development of events. Now, with James Vail in the hands of the sheriff, my own spiritual sensitivity tells me that the danger has returned to the usual moderate level. Tomorrow, you may return to Zoar, but I hope you will keep in touch with us, and return if needed. Others may not appreciate what you have done, but I certainly do. In some ways, fate is in our own hands, but in other ways it is in the hands of God. Therefore no member of our community can with justice criticize your service to us. You have given us your time, which at your age must seem precious, and your good heart. So, I thank you.”

They sat silently for a long while, both gazing our across the water, watching an occasional bird flying on a mission that only it could understand, and the slow-moving fleecy white clouds. Occasionally, a question nearly reached Amasa’s lips, but then receded. It was very quiet until...

Bang! A loud gunshot, nearby, perhaps from a stand of trees just back from the shore. Bang! A second shot, then: Thump! Thump! That must have been two bullets striking the wall of the cottage. In an instant, Noyes had run inside, Amasa had joined him, and they shut the door, barring it quickly. Lillie was standing near the window, her face expressing bewilderment. “Get down!” Amasa shouted. “The attacker might shoot through the window. I think he was over to the side, but may run around front.”

From a closet, Noyes took a rife, which Amasa thought was a twin of the one Newhouse had carried, a Winchester ‘73. Noyes seemed to know how to use it, although it was hard to imagine the old man handling such a new kind of weapon. Then Amasa reminded himself that he was considerable older than Noyes, yet he knew his rifles well. On closer inspection this was not a ‘73 like the one Newhouse carried, but a heavier ‘76, built for more powerful ammunition., intended to hunt big game, bigger than seemed common this side of the Rocky Mountains or the Maine Woods.

For a long while, the three of them crouched on the floor, the two men on either side of the window, alert to any sign of movement but not exposing themselves for a clear shot by whomever was trying to kill Noyes, which must have been the assailant’s ambition. At one point, Noyes spoke briefly about their situation saying that other community members would visit the cottage late the next morning. He then cautioned both Lillie and Amasa to say nothing to anyone about the attack. Before long, the sun began to set. As darkness fell, Lillie reached for an oil lamp, but Noyes whispered to her not to light it. Instead, she retrieved some bread and cups of water from the kitchen, so the three ate quietly, still crouching low. Afterward, Noyes motioned for Lillie to head upstairs and go to bed.

The two old men remained awake all night, usually silent, but occasionally discussing the situation. Noyes asked Amasa to stay at Oneida at least several more days, and he immediately agreed. Noyes then explained that there were two reasons he wanted to keep the attack quiet. First, he wanted the morale of the community to return to normal, aided by the festival. Second, he thought that he and Amasa, working separately and in very different ways, could get much more reliable information about the new danger if the other members of the community were not rushing around, also looking for the gunman. Of course the assailant himself knew what had happened, and would be on his guard regardless of whether the community returned to crisis. But given that all the hysteria had failed to catch Vail before his arson, there seemed little that widespread consternation could accomplish.

By morning, both men were exhausted, but Lillie seemed reasonably well rested when she returned downstairs and prepared a simple breakfast. When they heard hoof beats nearing, Noyes returned the Winchester to the closet and reminded the others not to speak about the attack. A half dozen members of the community arrived near mid day, all in good spirits, and set about taking care of their horses. Harriet Noyes was among them, and Amasa wondered if her husband would explain the situation to her in private. The more general plan was for Lillie and Amasa to head back to the Mansion House with the Whitechapel immediately. Since today was Saturday, Mr. and Mrs. Noyes with the others would return in mid-afternoon, after letting the horses rest. As Lillie was hitching the horse to the Whitechapel, Amasa surreptitiously scanned the front of the cottage, and indeed not far from the chair where Noyes had been sitting there was a bullet lodged in the windowsill.

When Amasa stumbled into his bedroom back in the Mansion House, he was too exhausted to wander around seeking information about the attack, so he napped for a couple hours, then spent a few minutes pondering how he could gather incriminating information without everyone realizing what he was doing. He hit upon the plan of telling people he was fascinated by the drama being prepared for performance the next day, and began visiting groups that were rehearsing this or that episode, pretending to be fascinated by their theatrics but really hunting for anything unusual that might provide a clue. Not long after dark, with no clear discoveries but a mind overflowing with trivia, he headed back to bed.


	8. The Play’s the Thing

Amasa brooded over a lonely Sunday breakfast in the upstairs sitting room, gazing alternately out the high windows at the sunny lawn below, or at the dark balcony above as he contemplated his situation. With few exceptions, the members of the community had decided he was an irrelevant intrusion, a waste of time who added nothing to their wellbeing. The main exception was Father Noyes who was now completely certain that someone was trying to kill him, and only Amasa Blodgett himself could prevent this vile deed from being carried out.

Yes, something was amiss, but he was not at all convinced that it was a simple plot to kill Noyes, a mystery that could be solved by uncovering a single, telling clue. For a few hours, the arrest of James Vail had seemed to put the problems to rest. Yes, Professor Mears still raged over the hills at Hamilton College, and Father Noyes might need at any moment to flee to the secret hideaway he had prepared just across the Canadian border. Conceivably, several of the suspicious events that had occurred recently were a plot not to kill Noyes, but to scare him away.

Did Vail burn the barn, killing all those innocent horses, out of personal rage? Or could Mears have paid him to do it? One would have thought that Mears would have prepared a means of escape for Vail, so it seemed likely that Vail had acted alone, out of a mad impulse.

Amasa could not shake the suspicion that the smaller fire, the one at the fruit house which Pat Maloney heroically extinguished, had actually been set by Maloney himself. Possibly Maloney told the story over and over to everyone who would listen in an awkward attempt to prevent anyone from suspecting him. Indirectly, Maloney may have held some responsibility for the barn fire, if his frantic tale-telling had given Vail the idea to set an even bigger fire. Probably Vail chose the horse barn as his target because his dispute with the community was about horses, and he logically wanted to deny the community what it had denied him, and fire was the only way to destroy it.

It seemed unlikely that Maloney was an agent for Mears, given his very close involvement with the community. Whoever had fired those two shots at Noyes yesterday at the lake could have been an agent of Mears. The unknown marksman could have intentionally missed, intending to scare Noyes away from Oneida, although Mears probably did not know about the Canadian hideaway. Or the marksman had intended to kill the commune leader, but fired from too great a distance because he needed to conceal himself among the trees. Then a third possibility came to mind. Possible a marksman had not fired at Noyes at all.

“Bang and bang, thump-thump!” Amasa exclaimed aloud. Suppose a marksman had fired two shots in an entirely different direction, with a pause between the shots. Suppose one bullet had been fired into the windowsill hours before. Suppose someone had banged on the wall, pretending to be two bullets, but with a different timing from the gunshots.

The only person who could have banged on the wall was Lillian Bailey. Another person who knew Noyes would be at the lake house was John Cragin. They both knew that Amasa would be visiting Noyes there. Suppose John had gone there early, perhaps when Noyes was talking a walk along the shore, and fired one bullet into the windowsill, then concealed himself in the trees. When he saw that Lillie was indoors but Noyes and Amasa were sitting in the deck chairs, he fired twice into the ground. She then banged twice on the inside of the wall, but did not exactly duplicate John’s rhythm.

Why would they have done that? The result of their charade was that Amasa would stay at Oneida at least a while longer, and both of them had been especially hospitable to him. At first he had assumed they were nice people, and perhaps even liked him. But perhaps the key was their relationship with each other. Aha! Perhaps they really did love each other, and yet exclusive love was forbidden at Oneida. Perhaps they were behind many of the threats, not intending to endanger Father Noyes, but only to gain some freedom so their love could blossom.

Perhaps, perhaps... Maybe Maloney had indeed set the small fire at the fruit house, and immediately extinguished it, because he had his own problem with the way of life at Oneida, not so extreme as Vail’s, but motivating him to disrupt the tranquility that sustained the status quo. How many other people at Oneida had their own personal grievances, and might do such things as place a dead rat on the bed of Father Noyes, or a steel trap on the bed of Amasa Blodgett.

Perhaps there was not just one plotter, but two hundred and fifty! Even if there were only twenty-five, not conspirators but acting alone and in pairs, it would do no good to scrutinize any one suspect very closely. Rather, he would need a very broad perspective on the community as a whole, learning a little bit about many people, cataloging all their different dissatisfactions, not to prevent one vile deed, but to suggest ways to reduce many small tensions. Yet, this rather compelling theory might be wrong, and as the case of Vail proved, there was great risk that vile deeds would be committed, not one but many.

Amasa stood from the breakfast table, put the strap of his leather case over his shoulder, and left the sitting room in search of John Cragin. Finding him in his accounting office, Amasa explained that he had come to realize that the situation at Oneida was very complicated, and he would need to become much more familiar with everyday life, before he could be really helpful. When John responded enthusiastically to this idea, Amasa resisted the temptation to take this as evidence John really had been the marksman, given that the attack was not public knowledge, and pleasantly asked for suggestions.

What he received was a catalog of all the places groups of community members were rehearsing for the afternoon performance of the Israel Putnam play. All across the nation, ordinary people were attending church, but the Perfectionists did not have church services, on the logic that every minute of their lives was sacred, not merely every seventh morning. Surely Adam and Eve did not attend church, either, at least not until leaving Eden.

He began to wander. Soon he came upon three young women being tested by Harriet Worden, who apparently knew the Putnam play better than anyone else. Designed for a moderately large cast, still the drama did not have roles for a hundred people, so many individuals would take on the same role at different points in the narrative. Harriet Worden explained to him she was testing the three young women, to see which one should recite exactly one small part of the role of Clara, whose beloved, William, was held captive by an Indian chief.

The first budding actress was Jessie Catherine Baker, daughter of John Humphrey Noyes with Catherine Hobart. She fell down on one knee, put her hands in a prayerful position, and begged, “Oh, Indian, listen to a woman weeping. Have mercy upon the prisoner, and you may do whatever you want with me, morning, noon, and night.” Harriet Worden praised the woman’s delivery, but observed that the words were all wrong.

Next came Leonora Hatch, who had just a few weeks before had given birth to one of the children of John Humphrey Noyes. She stood very straight, moving not at all, with no expression on her face and stammered, “Hear me, um, oh great chief mighty warrior listen to a woman supplicating, having mercy upon the prisoner, spare his life. Oh, well, and I, um, will... er, will pray for you, I mean thee, eternally, bless you, I mean thee, morning, noon, and night.” Polite thanks were all this attempt earned.

Carline Bolles, known familiarly as Carrie, went third: “Hear me, great chief; mighty warrior, listen to a woman’s supplications. Have mercy upon the prisoner, spare his life, and I will pray for thee eternally, bless thee morning, noon, and night.” Harriet Worden applauded, exclaimed that Carrie’s delivery was perfect, as well as her memorization of the words, and gave her the part.

Lunchtime had arrived, and again food was provided outdoors, so Amasa ate at a leisurely pace, as he walked here and there, pretending he wasn’t scrutinizing everyone and everything. He noticed that young Pierrepont was wearing a soldier’s costume, apparently having won the contest to represent General Putnam when he raced down that hill in Greenwich. Several small groups were singing the same chorus. It seemed rather late for them still to be in competition with each other, so he surmised that the plan was to repeat the chorus with which the play begins, at various points, perhaps when there were scene changes, allowing everybody who wanted to perform it to do so.

Hoping to get a front row seat for the performance, he headed for the large meeting room in the Mansion House. At the entrance he encountered William Hinds, the long-time community member who had become a follower of James Towner, when that refugee from a failed free-love commune had joined Oneida only five years earlier. Hinds was passing out a printed page, which Amasa at first thought was the program for the performance, until he read it:

“Petition for a Constitutional Convention. Whereas... The recent failure to prevent James Vail from murdering two dozen faithful horses, and destroying a beautiful barn, demonstrates again the fallibility of Oneida leadership... We propose a Constitutional Convention, of twelve leading members of our community, to draw up new regulations for mutual criticism, amative intercourse, and the selection of partners for stirpiculture. The plan would be to create a new and infallible set of rules for evaluating at regular intervals the spiritual progress toward perfection of each member, a lottery system to assign partners for sexual encounters employing absolutely reliable methods for male continence, and a scientific method for selecting fathers for children of young mothers. This system is intended to enforce loyalty of every community member, at the same time it provides each member with complete satisfaction. The economic system will remain absolutely communist, and the perfection of the new regulations will prevent community resources from being wasted or enjoyed disproportionately by any class of members. After one successful year under this new system of perfect equality, within degrees of spiritual perfection, the system will be shared with the world through aggressive evangelism.”

Amasa nodded his thanks, entered the hall, and looked around. There was a low stage at the front of the room, and where people were standing suggested to him that each set of performers would enter from the left, so he took a seat in that area, where he could inspect people preparing for their turns, and both see and hear the current performers on the stage. He saw that a few chairs had been reserved over on the other side, right at the front, where Lillie Cragin was standing, apparently ready to show the community’s leaders to their seats.

He felt a hand on his shoulder, and turned to find Sewell Newhouse sitting behind him. “Still here, Amasa? You should certainly return to your Hessian friends tomorrow. Ha, ha! I don’t actually know if the Germans in your Zoar commune are Hessians, but when I was a lad, first in Vermont and then when my parents moved out to this part of New York State, we used to say nasty things about the German mercenary soldiers who fought on the British side in our grand revolution. I also don’t know if there are Hessians in this drama, because I am not favorably disposed to General Putnam, so I have not checked the script.”

Greatly irritated, Amasa struggled to find the words to insult Newhouse without being obviously impolite. “But I would have thought you would take the role of Putnam yourself. Why not?”

“Ha, ha! Good repost, Amasa. Truth to tell, I have a family connection to Putnam, but not one to boast about. You may know that the Rebel troops at Bunker Hill were disorganized, and could not even decide where to stand, let alone what to do. Putnam made his fame running around, like a crazy man, exhorting all the men to hold firm, to stand here, stand there, shoot the enemy. Any objective analysis would say that we lost the Battle of Bunker Hill, and the British won. But our troops withdrew in good order, after inflicting many casualties on the British, and even taking a few prisoners. That’s where I came in, or, rather, my grandfather, who was a British solider captured that day, who settled down after the war in New England, rather than returning to Old England. Well, enjoy the play.”

Before Amasa could respond, Newhouse walked over to the entrance, where John Humphrey Noyes and Harriet Noyes were now standing, leading them over to where Lillie Cragin was sitting. So, Newhouse had no need to learn the lines spoken by General Putnam, because he was sitting in a place of honor, beside the community’s leader, right where Putnam’s actor would exit after his scenes. A man holding a bugle, stepped onto the stage, and blew a fanfare, alerting everyone to take seats.

A small orchestra took the stage, and as soon as the audience was quiet, began playing the _Fra Diavolo_ overture. Amasa had heard the music so many times, he did not bother to listen closely, but reminisced about other kinds of music he had heard over the years. Of course the most musical of the other communities was the Shakers, who danced when they were not busy singing. In his mind, he heard their most famous melody, _Simple Gifts_ , and pondered how Oneida seems to treasure complexity, unlike the simplicity sought by the Shakers. Then he remembered the very most complex of the utopian communities, the chain of phalanxes that made up the non-religious Fourierist Movement, whose members not only danced and sang but also marched.

Amasa himself had felt rather comfortable among the Shakers, who offered him ample rest after his frantic adventures along the western frontier, but then a murder-related dispute eventually forced him to leave, taking up residence for his final decades among the Separatists of Zoar, who wished to withdraw from the world rather than remake it, living simple lives like the Shakers, but without their fanaticism. There were no complicated religious services, but the Zoar community did possess an organ and several pianos. Another German commune, Amana, allowed singing, in forms of chant rather than secular songs, but forbad musical instruments, except for an occasional flute, modestly employed. In contrast, as its name implies, The Harmony Society loved music, and expected all members to be able to read music as well as sing it. Amasa tried to imagine an orchestra composed entirely of flutes trying to perform the _Fra Diavolo_ overture.

Loud but respectful applause followed the overture, and the performers carried their instruments past John Humphrey Noyes, who waved at them as they departed. Harriet Worden, who had been playing the piccolo, remained on stage and gestured for a chorus of some of the older children to join her. A soon as they were in place, Harriet announced, “Now begins _Putnam, the Iron Son of '76_ by Nathaniel Harrington Bannister.” She turned, taking the position of a conductor, and led the chorus in singing the opening lines of the play, to the tune of _Beautiful Dreamer_ :

“We will be free, we will be free, As the winds of the earth or the waves of the sea; Will bow to no tyrant, submit to no yoke, But struggle like men till our fetters are broke. Shout, shout! let it echo on earth and o’er sea! Our tyrant shall tremble; we will be free!”

After the chorus had left the stage, four men in costumes ascended, arranged themselves as if they were having an exceedingly inspirational conversation, and then froze motionless like living statues for at least two minutes, in a tableau vivant. Two of the four men were wearing dark blue coats and white wigs. Amasa imagined that one of them was Putnam, and perhaps the other was his commander, General Washington. His guess was confirmed a few moments later, when a different chorus took the stage, and sang a few stanzas ending with, “Hail our chief, the mighty Washington.”

The next scene was primarily a conversation between a husband and wife, who called each other William and Clara, as the husband was headed off to war. When the wife mentioned _Yankee Doodle_ , a piano in the back of the room played a few notes of this familiar tune. The scene ended dramatically but incongruously, as a slightly wounded Putnam arrived to take William into battle. Amasa did not recognize any of the players, and this Putnam did not seem to be the same actor as the first Putnam. There was some noise in the back of the meeting hall, as people who had completed their performances took seats, and others went to get in line on the left to await their turns.

The next several scenes were rather confusing conversations between ordinary citizens, including two more Oneida ladies who took their turns being Clara, then somehow shifting to an Indian village. Apparently to reduce the confusion, several of the actors named their characters the first time they spoke, it was especially symbolic that James Towner took the role of Chief Oneactah. He was wearing what appeared to be a buckskin shirt, beads and a beaded purse, buckskin leggings with fringe down the outsides of the legs, moccasins, a feathered head-dress, with a long black wig. He had his hands full, carrying a huge knife, a tomahawk, a rifle, a bow, and a quiver of arrows. Amasa guessed that the community already possessed all these props, and had given Oneactah all the apparatus they, in their innocence of Indian life a century earlier, imagined a chief would possess.

Towner stood threatening over John Cragin, who was kneeling before him, with arms behind his back, as if they were tied. John seemed to be playing the character of William, Clara’s husband, who had been captured in battle by the Indians. John was wearing a green coat, a red vest, and a three-corner hat. Amasa wondered why a colonial solider would wear a red vest, certainly a fine target for the enemy’s guns. Towner spoke first: “Ugh, a prisoner!

John replied, “Yes, to a merciless foe!”

Towner agreed, in an angry tone of voice: “Who makes the red man’s heart thirst for blood.”

John repaid anger with insult: “Tis his savage nature.”

When Towner replied, he sounded exactly like himself, rather than an Indian chief, apparently finding a sympathetic political argument in the words of the playwright: “Savage! The savage is a man; he sees the storm cloud gather over the roof of his wigwam; he sees the war club and the scalping knife raised high in the air; he hears the shriek of his murdered wife, and feels her hot blood upon his cheek; he sees his children dragged away from him by a ruthless foe; he sees desolation and woe scattered wide over his hunting ground. The white man must go from his land − he will be free or he will die.”

John refused to engage in an academic debate: “You are murderers.”

“So are the white faces.”

“Whom have we murdered?”

Towner turned, speaking loudly to the audience, looking directly at John Humphrey Noyes: “You have murdered the peace of a nation. You first came, like the sweets of the moon, with soft words like the song birds. Your faces were clothed in smiles, and we gave you of our lands. Then you swept around us like the big wind when the trees are leafless, and, when you grew stronger, you turned upon us like the tempest, devastated the country, laid bare the mounds that covered the bones of our fathers, and our houses are seen no more.”

A few moments later, Carrie Bolles, came forth as Clara, begging for her husband’s life: “Hear me, great chief; mighty warrior, listen to a woman’s supplications. Have mercy upon the prisoner, spare his life, and I will pray for thee eternally, bless thee morning, noon, and night.” Some time in the past, Carrie − or rather Clara − had helped Oneactah when his life was in danger, so he repaid his debt by releasing John − or rather William.

Much of the drama seemed to have nothing to do with General Israel Putnam, or indeed with any real events of the American Revolution. Another chorus sang “We will be free,” and Amasa contented himself with the perception that all of it was a stewpot full of familiar symbols, the meat and potatoes as it were of American patriotism, rather than a coherent story about real people. So, a fine festival to rouse the morale of the community, but did it offer any clues about the assassination attempt on the life of John Humphrey Noyes, two days earlier?

One point seemed clear. James Towner and his group of dissidents were not yet ready to assassinate Father Noyes in a literal sense. They were quite open in their criticism of him, and they hoped to gather a majority of community members to their cause. Any physical conflict would only complicate the picture and distract from their political campaign. Only later, if they sensed that they were losing, would they contemplate violence.

After several confusing scenes, Hinds stepped on stage, carrying a rifle, and playing the role of a sentinel for the British. He spoke in what he imagined was a German accent: “Dis is ver cold night as never vas: te tam snow get in mine eyes and make ‘em cry. O, tese tam Mericans eat Hessians up like vun hog. O, mine Got and Lorder, vot peoples ever been heard of! Vot! eat Christians! Vy, sure tese Mericans be te tevil. O, ‘tis so cold!” A Hessian! Amasa wondered how the typical Oneida member viewed members of the German communes like Zoar and Amana. Yes, they were devoutly religious, but very conventional, even archaic, while Oneida was a radical movement toward a strange future.

One long scene, in which Putnam was played by yet another man, seemed quite bizarre, perhaps even pure comedy rather than respectful history. Putnam was a captive of the British, but they did not know that he was Putnam, thinking he was just some lowly soldier. The British wanted to capture Putnam, and Putnam told their officer that he knew where Putnam was. The British officer promised to give Putnam a reward and free him, if he could honestly betray Putnam’s location. This Putnam promised sincerely to do, so they had a bargain. Putnam then said that Putnam was right here, because he himself was Putnam. Before the British officer could seize Putnam, Putnam reminded him he had promised to free him, if he revealed where Putnam was, which he had reliably done. Apparently an honest gentleman, the British officer freed Putnam, in return for the information he needed to capture Putnam, and Putnam rode away on his horse.

At this point, Pierrepont rode into the entrance of the meeting room, using a broom with a paper horse’s head as his steed, galloped along the left side, across the stage at the front, passed his father, then along the right side and out again. The performance became chaotic with a series of brief tableaus, that seemed to illustrate scenes in a great battle between the Americans and the British, although exactly which historical battle was by no means obvious. Then the stage cleared and a final chorus sang again the song about being free, this time with the audience joining in.

Before people could begin to leave, Theodore Noyes took the stage and shouted “Wait!” Amasa imagined that the son of Father Noyes would close the meeting with a prayer, or some inspiring words about Oneida, but that was not Theodore’s plan. “We have enjoyed this popular drama, which professional actors have often performed for pay, but it is an example of popular hysteria, not true history. Not a word of this drama relates to real events. Nathaniel Bannister, author of this play, died in poverty just over thirty years ago. An actor as well as author of perhaps forty plays, he had great success with this one, but never could establish a solid reputation. He was a formula writer, who stole most of his topics from history, but scrambled events and did not take history seriously. Much of America wanted to believe that General Israel Putnam was a hero and a competent leader. But that is a lie.”

Since Amasa was sitting quite near the stage, he could see that Theodore was holding the community’s copies of Bannister’s play and the copy of the Putnam biography by Increase Tarbox. Theodore held high the book. “This is a reasonably careful story of Putnam’s life, published just three years ago, but it leaves out most of the controversies, and keeps saying that all the accusations against Putnam certainly must be false. At least it is truthful enough to admit there were accusations, although it fails to mention all of them.”

Throughout the meeting hall, people were muttering to each other, or expressing irritation at Theodore’s words. “When I was at Yale,” he continued, “and during my times at our nearby Wallingford community,” I read much local history and visited historically significant locations in the area. The title of Bannister’s drama calls Putnam the ‘Iron Son of ‘76,’ which refers to his mad frenzy during the Battle of Bunker Hill, which may indeed have rallied our troops. But everything that Putnam did afterward was either incompetent or immoral. Let me tell you an example that illustrates both flaws.”

Theodore dropped both publications on the stage, one after the other, causing loud bangs, then raised his right hand for silence. “Perhaps twenty miles west of New Haven, between the towns of Redding and Bethel, lies the Connecticut land where Putnam camped in the winter of 1778 to 1779. He divided his army in three camps, and right at the center of this triangle is a place I have visited, now called Gallows Hill. Can you guess how it got its name?”

After a couple of the men made impolite guesses, Theodore continued. “We like to think that American men of that winter were dedicated supporters of the Revolution, but consider that second revolution of just a few years ago. We do not assume that it was right for the South to secede from the Union, and hundreds of thousands of lives were lost putting down that rebellion. Yes, I agree with you that the South was wrong to allow slavery, yet Americans felt many different ways about that great struggle. The same was true back in the days of Israel Putnam. Some men wanted an independent America, while others wanted to remain British, and still others could not decide. Many in all three groups were reluctant to risk their lives for a cause that might lose, might prove useless even if it won, and they themselves had not voted for.

“During the hardships of that cold winter, with limited supplies of food and warm clothing, many of Putnam’s men contemplated returning to their homes. At the same time, people who lived in that part of Connecticut, not so very far from New York City which was held by the British, were going about their business, under difficult conditions and having to deal one way or another with both sides. Putnam felt he was losing control, surrounded by spies and saboteurs, afraid that his men would desert at any moment. So he announced that the very next spy, and the very next deserter, would be executed on the spot, without any delay. Just as at Bunker Hill, he responded to pressure with insanity, revealing himself to be the monster that he was, totally devoid of compassion, refusing to admit that God had not given him the right to decide the fates of other men, and preparing to commit atrocity.”

Many of the men in the room had now risen to their feet, and Theodore was forced to shout to be heard. “Two men with very common names, Edward Jones and John Smith, became Putnam’s victims. Jones was judged a spy, and Smith, a deserter. Yet what right did Putnam have to condemn men for failure to be loyal to him? Had they been given a lawyer, he could have argued that until the war was over no man could be a traitor because the land lacked a legitimate government to be treasonous against. Perhaps Putnam was so vicious that he took pleasure in executions. I tend to think he was simply so hotheaded that he had proclaimed the next spy and deserter would be summarily killed, and felt forced to fulfill this harsh pledge.

“When time came for Jones to jump from the ladder of the gallows with the rope around his neck, he proclaimed his innocence, and refused. Putnam drew his sword and threatened the hangman with it, to get the murder over with. Smith, the deserter, was only sixteen years old, and kept fainting as Putnam forced him to march to the gallows, so he was ordered shot, at such close range that the gun set his clothing afire. We should not honor such a monster as Putnam in our voyage toward Perfection, and indeed we may doubt that any one man has the good judgment to decide life and death issues for other free people.”

Amasa could see Hinds and Towner standing in a far corner with smiles on their faces, but everyone else seemed angry, many shouting insults at Theodore. George Cragin, a grim frown on his faced walked over to Theodore, and seemed to be urging his friend to leave. Amasa pondered two meanings of this moment that Theodore might or might not have been considered. First of all, his tirade against Putnam effectively denigrated everyone who had played a role in the performance. Second, in many people’s minds Putnam may have been a symbol not so much of America as of Oneida, in the person of John Humphrey Noyes. Amasa looked in the direction of Father Noyes, but at first could not see him because many people were standing. Then he caught a glimpse of Father Noyes and his wife departing through a side exit.

Several of the men remained as everyone else departed, moving close to Theodore and hurling insults. Then one of them pushed him, and he staggered back into a music stand that had been left on the stage. George seized his hand, steadied him, and pulled him away from the group of angry men. As George and Theodore worked their way through the crowd and out the exit, Amasa looked at the faces of the men and tried to recognize them. They all seemed to be community members, but he did not know the name of a single one. At first this worried him, because it indicated he was still ignorant of many sources of tension in the community. Then he realized that the group did not include any of the prominent members whose personal stories suggested they might be responsible for any of the threatening incidents. It seemed unlikely that any of these men would have fired those two shots at Noyes two days earlier, if indeed anyone had, because here they were spontaneously acting as rank-and-file defenders of Oneida, not traitors.

Amasa followed George and Theodore out of the Mansion House, then decided to respect their privacy as they headed toward George’s office, and the raucous mob of men remained near the doorway, shouting as them as they left. As had become his habit, Amasa did a circuit of the Mansion House and the buildings adjacent to it, noticing John Humphrey Noyes sitting in the tree-shaded lawn chair where he liked to read, but talking with Harriet Noyes, who was animated in her gestures, but speaking very quietly. On his second circuit, he noticed that Father Noyes was now alone, and walked over to him.

“Good evening, Mr. Blodgett. Have you made any helpful discoveries.” Amasa explained that everything he had seen and heard since the assassination attempt had indicated which groups at Oneida were probably not responsible, but also confirmed that conditions had not yet returned to normal, despite the fact they were keeping that attack secret. “I told my wife, Harriet, about the attack, and she was very distressed, but promised not to tell anyone else just yet.” Amasa asked him if he had any further ideas about who might have fired those two shots.

Rather than speak about particular suspects, or possible clues, Father Noyes offered a philosophical analysis: “We must be reconciled with the original constitution of the universe, whatever that is. If it is a combination of good and evil, if there is a God on one side and a devil on the other, and chaos between them, no matter what, the original constitution of the universe is as it is, and can not be helped, and we must be contended with it. If we are discontented with that, there is no contentment for us. We must cease to wish that the great whole were otherwise. We must not long for a universe that is free from evil. It can not be. It is not so, and, we may say, God can not make it so.”

After brief consideration of this fatalistic idea, Amasa took from his tool case the book Noyes had sent him, _History of American Socialisms_. “We both have studied the variety of communal experiments in America, and I have been reading your excellent book, based so well upon your own research as well as the intellectual legacy of A. J. MacDonald. As you know, I have assisted several communes in finding the truth about attacks against them, and in one case I found that a series of attacks over many years against different communities were instigated by the same evil conspiracy. These were the attacks against the Socialist Phalanxes, beginning with Brook Farm and ending with the North American Phalanx. I am sorry to report that the only way I could end that horror, which effectively ended the Fourierist Movement, involved misinformation about MacDonald’s death. May I explain?”

Noyes nodded, his jaw clenched and eyes narrow. “Your excellent book does contain one small error, and I must apologize because it is my fault, not yours. “ He opened the volume to one of several bookmarked pages. You wrote about his failure to complete the book he was writing: ‘He gathered a huge mass of materials, wrote his preface, and then died in New York of the cholera. Our record of his last visit is dated February, 1854.’ Yes, cholera killed about two thousand people that year in New York City, but in fact MacDonald was not among them. He had been murdered. Just as you decided, now, to keep secret the assassination attempt against you, the better to discover the attacker, I did the same back in 1854, convincing the local constabulary and the leaders of the North American Phalanx to conceal the truth, so I could act against the killer, which I did effectively. The conspiracy that killed him no longer exists, but I wonder if a new one now might possibly have more targets than just Oneida.”

Amasa turned to a different page in Noyes’ book. “However, you yourself say that Oneida is unique, and thus we can infer that attackers would be unlikely to have a second target. If I may read one of your paragraphs: ‘The Oneida Community belongs to the class of religious Socialisms, and, so far as we know, is the only religious Community of American origin. Its founder and most of its members are descendants of New England Puritans, and were in early life converts and laborers in the Revivals of the Congregational and Presbyterian churches. As Unitarianism ripened into Transcendentalism at Boston, and Transcendentalism produced Brook Farm, so Orthodoxy ripened into Perfectionism at New Haven, and Perfectionism produced the Oneida Community.’”

Noyes agreed with Amasa’s logic, noting that Brook Farm may have been founded with religious ideals, but changed into a secular Socialism following the teachings of Charles Fourier. The original Harmony commune had been religious, but German in origin just like Zoar and Amana, and its successor, New Harmony, was non-religious, based on the Socialist ideas of Robert Owen rather than Fourier. The largest of the religious communities, the Shakers, was thoroughly American today, but the tiny original group had been brought from England by their founder, Ann Lee. Thus there existed no other community in America like Oneida, so the motives behind the attacks must be peculiar to Oneida.

Amasa mentioned that he had lived for more than a decade among the Shakers, and was fascinated to see how Oneida had handled family relations so differently. In passing, he mentioned the one murder at the Shaker communities he had solved, which implicated Mary Marshall Dyer, who with her husband and children had joined the Enfield, New Hampshire, commune, then defected and became the worst enemy of the Shakers when they refused to release her children.

“Communism, dreadful bugbear as it is on the large scale, is the fundamental principle of every family,” Noyes observed. “The man keeps no account with his wife, but cares for her as for himself. Man and wife keep no account with their children, but regard them as their own flesh. This is the theory, at least, of the family compact. Thus all children are born in Communism, and for the sweetest part of their lives are nourished and brought up in Communism. They come in contact with the opposite principle of trading selfishness, only when they begin to leave the family circle and mingle with the world.”

Accepting this premise, Amasa then spoke about Oneida’s logic of expanding the family to include a hundred adults, all in a very real sense married to each other, and linked through amative intercourse, even as children were produced by the planned breeding that the community called stirpiculture.

Noyes nodded, but preferred to speak about emotion rather than logic: “Communism is really the very essence of Home. The man who turns back in imagination from the desert of common life to the oasis of his childhood, and sings, ‘Home, sweet, sweet Home,’ is unconsciously thinking of Communism, and longing to return to it.” He then added the logic that only a religious form of Socialism could fully reproduce the family on a large scale, led ultimately by Our Father Who Art in Heaven.

Amasa then suggested that at Oneida the Lord served more as a grandfather than a father, with Father Noyes leading the communal family here on earth. Satan has not the power to assassinate God in Heaven, but might assassinate Noyes in Oneida, to foil God’s plan for the family to expand beyond its traditional size. Switching gears, something that modern wainwrights are learning to do well, Amasa then suggested that if the enemy here is not Satan, perhaps it is one or more members of the community who, like Towner and Hinds but far less honestly, desire the independence enjoyed by adults, rather than eternal dependence like children. He then quoted the final line of the chorus from the Putnam play, “Our tyrant shall tremble; we will be free!”

Noyes admitted this was a possibility, but one born out of ignorance on the part of any traitor. “There are two kinds of liberty, and they look in exactly opposite directions. One is the liberty of independence. ‘Hands off, leave me alone!’ is its language. ‘I want to do as I please without interference.’ The other is the liberty of unity − the liberty of fellowship − liberty to approach one another and love one another − the liberty of Communism. There is but little conception, generally, of this second kind of liberty; and yet it is greatly superior to the first. If I were called upon to say what is the greatest conceivable blessing, I should have to reply that it is a genuine love feast − a flowing together of hearts. This is possible; we may enjoy perfect communism of life, and do realize that we sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.”

The conversation became less clear, with many biblical quotations and worldly metaphors that were difficult to decode. Amasa got the sense that Noyes had been deeply affected by the angry lecture against Putnam by his son, Theodore, and may have taken it as a rejection of himself. If his own intimate family was not of one heart, how could Communism unite hundreds of individuals? Some of the quotations Noyes voiced suggested he might identify himself with Christ, implying that the time for his crucifixion approached. But Noyes also spoke of Moses, that much more aggressive messiah who challenged God’s supreme power to make a safe path through the Red Sea.

Seeking to get the conversation back down to earth, Amasa asked Noyes a painfully difficult question. How would each of the following behave if he had indeed been assassinated: Towner, Newhouse, and his son Theodore?

“My wife, Harriet, believes Towner is a devil, but I consider him an honest man.” Noyes moved his hands as if comparing the weights of two heavy objects. “Yes, he does not respect my authority, but he is a man of principle. I would not have invited him and his group here, if I had not believed that and had enough dealings with him to have confidence in my judgment. Another way of saying this: If we cannot covert Towner to our way of thinking, then whom can we convert other than lambs ready to go to any slaughter? He wants to find the right path, and he has already journeyed far in his life.”

Noyes paused, then almost casually put his hands in his pockets. “Sewell Newhouse is in very great measure the source of our prosperity, because the traps he invented are our most profitable business by far. He is the only person here at Oneida who does not want any changes of any kind. Even I am prepared for change, as I was prepared to hand over the reins of leadership to Theodore. I only wish he had been ready to seize them!” Noyes shuddered, and his expression became grim. “It is horrible to contemplate, but for a moment I saw something that might happen if I were out of the picture. I imaged Newhouse pointing his gun, first at Towner, and next at Theodore, trying to decide who was the greater threat to the community’s current way of life, and needed quicker killing. I very much rely upon Newhouse and admire him, but his rigidity seems very dangerous to me, if ever the fellowship of Oneida weakens.”

His left hand fell at his side, and Noyes stroked his chin with his right hand. “I worry about Theodore. He cares so very much, yet is so uncertain about where truth lies, and what path to take. He was a very small boy when our complex marriage system first appeared, and we moved here to Oneida soon afterward. He experienced many changes, but then so has all of America during his lifetime, and certainly Yale College was very different when he attended, than when I did. I imagined Theodore might grow up to be very similar to me, except even more perfect, but his life has been very different from mine. The name, ‘Theodore,’ means ‘God’s gift,’ and yet he is not even confident that God exists.”

Noyes gestured with his right hand, as if counting three things. “Newhouse is the most certain, Theodore most uncertain, and Towner stands between them. I worry that Newhouse, for all his virtues and value, could do great harm. I worry that Theodore, for all I love him, could in his vacillation allow some great evil to occur. Towner, for all his faults, would strive to do his best, Yes, I know, many people believe he is simply selfish, wanting more power or pleasure for himself. But I believe he recognizes that selfishness within him, struggles against it, and is moving forward on the path to perfection, however far he still needs to go.”

Only after leaving Noyes sitting under his favorite tree, did Amasa realize that the father of Oneida had spoken in a clear, loud voice, rather than a whisper. If he had regained his voice, would he now go on the offensive against the mysterious attacker? Or if there were many potential traitors, would Noyes lead his people through the rough seas of intense individualism back to unity?

Back in the Mansion House, he watched some of the more quiet members of the community cleaning up after the festival, including one who was collecting copies of the petition Hinds had passed out, which had been left here and there, on chairs, tables, and even the floor, by members who obviously did not resonate to that message, even if they had harmonized with the play’s chorus of liberty.


	9. Suspense

At breakfast the next day, Amasa looked around the dining area for four people he wanted to interview. They included the three men he had discussed with Father Noyes the day before: Towner, Newhouse, and Theodore Noyes. But he also wanted to speak with Harriet Worden. Her behavior during the festival had perplexed him. She had seemed so happy, energetic, and sociable. And yet, the father of her baby daughter, James Vail, had burned the barn, was captured by Newhouse, and sent off to the sheriff’s jail. Logically, she would be very worried, perhaps also angry, so her apparent happiness made no sense at all.

James Towner was the first one of the quartet he found, sitting alone, sipping tea, and reading a copy of _The Atlantic Monthly_. “May I join you, Mr. Towner?” Amasa asked. Towner nodded, and motioned at the empty chair across the small table from his. “May I now ask why you are reading about the Atlantic, when that ocean is many miles east of here?”

Towner chuckled, then commented, “I rather imagine you are joking with me, Mr. Blodgett, considering that this fine magazine has been published since well before the Civil War. Well, this is last February’s issue, and it contains a fascinating article about copyright law. I am, as you may realize, a lawyer, and even before coming here I helped Oneida with a copyright case. You may also have heard about how Charles Guiteau stole some of the ideas of John Humphrey Noyes, and distorted them. These are complex issues. We spread the word so that others may receive it, yet we deserve credit for what we write. Oneida earns money through its publications, and thus would be harmed financially, but possibly helped spiritually, if others copied our words without paying us. More important, I think, is the problem of distortion. If our words are true, they cannot be altered, and one reason for both copyright and trademark laws is so that people may trust the authenticity of what they read or buy. This article discusses the history of copyright, and the problem that today different nations do not cooperate, even not America with England, in upholding the same standards.”

Amasa smiled as he nodded, wondering what to ask next. Somewhat awkwardly, he asked, “And do you, Mr. Towner, share the vision of Father Noyes, exactly, partially, or not at all?”

Playfully, Towner responded, “Watch that vision metaphor, Mr. Blodgett! As you can see, I lost one of my eyes long ago, in the Civil War, as a matter of fact. It was in 1862 at the Battle of Elkhorn Tavern, also called the Battle of Pea Ridge although I prefer the tavern name because it was to that historic building I was taken after I was so grievously wounded. An opponent of slavery, I had volunteered for the army early on, and I must express some uncertainty whether it was right for Oneida and the Shakers to sit out that war in the comfort of their communes. As to vision, I do find that my perspective was altered, making it somewhat more difficult to gauge the distance to nearby objects, but not affecting at all my perception of things that are at a considerable distance. As a metaphor, our vision of the future oddly seems clear over the shortest distance, and the longest distance, but not for intermediate distances. Right now, I shall drink my tea and chat with you. At the end of my life, I shall achieve perfection. But what I will do over the years between, I cannot predict.”

Amasa asked him about his past, which presumably was already visible in full perspective, at least in memory. Towner told him he had been born in Willsboro, New York, rather far northeast of Oneida, and as a boy had been an avid reader, although his formal schooling had been poor and brief. He had moved to Ohio, not far from Cleveland, where in 1850 he married the marvelous woman to whom he was still married, with the poetic name Cinderella Sweet. They came to Oneida with their three children, but sadly son Frederick had died soon afterward. Towner paused, then set aside his grief by telling more about his life before coming to Oneida. 

When he married, Towner was serving as a Universalist minister, traveling around much of northern Ohio, but he left the church when his anti-slavery views caused intense arguments with members who preferred to avoid any issues of human freedom. He and Cinderella moved to Iowa, where he worked in the lumber business and studied to become a lawyer. He did participate in an 1856 socialist convention at Berlin Heights, and contributed to its periodical, _The Social Revolutionist_ , but did not yet live within its commune. After the war, Towner and his family moved to Berlin Heights, and participated in chaotic attempts at free love communism.

Towner’s autobiographical reverie ended with a forceful summation: “We had been talking and writing a long time about the social equality of women and freedom and justice, and considering what we must do to bring about those much desired objects. Most of us were waiting for the time to come when we could do something; we were waiting for association, for community, for social reorganization of some sort. I began to see that instead of this waiting, we must go to work right here and now.”

As if to twist his meaning in an unexpected direction, a lady sitting at a nearby table suddenly vomited. Someone shouted, “Ann Eliza, are you all right?” Towner explained that the sick lady was Ann Eliza van Velzer, and Amasa felt very confused, realizing that she was John Cragin’s lost love, who a decade earlier had been ordered to have a child by a different man in order to cure their exclusive affection. Was it possible that Oneida was really under direct attack by the Devil? Several other ladies came to Ann Eliza’s assistance, some comforting her and offering her water to drink, and others cleaning up the mess. After several minutes of sympathy and confusion, suddenly another lady vomited, and then a man at the opposite side of the room. Towner loudly announced that he was going in search of doctors Theodore Noyes and George Cragin, and rushed away.

By the time Towner returned, a half dozen people were sick. “I could not find Theodore,” he said, “but George will be here as soon as he can get his medical kit.” Soon, everybody was outdoors, now eight sufferers being tended by groups of community members, as George Cragin checked each one over. At his command, Amasa and Towner went back inside and sat by the table of breakfast foods, to prevent anyone from eating any, under the suspicion that so many people sick so simultaneously must have been the result of bad food.

An hour after the medical emergency began, George was able to leave his patients and examine the table. Almost immediately his suspicions focused on the whole wheat breakfast cereal, as he explained to Amasa. “Recently we have been trying out various culinary innovations from the outside world, and this is one of them. We grind the wheat ourselves, using the whole kernel, not discarding the husk, on the logic that including it gives substance to the cereal and thus moves it in a unified mass through the digestive system. It is prepared in the top part of a huge double boiler − one kettle within another. In this boiler the wheat is slowly cooked on the back of a stove from thirty-six to forty-eight hours. When served with cream it is more delicious than any breakfast food ever invented.”

Amasa speculated that cooking so long might cause the wheat to rot, but George shook his head. He took a spoonful of the sticky cereal, and sniffed at it, immediately grimacing. He carefully touched it with one finger, tasted the finger, and then spat. “Ipecac! Probably medical syrup of ipecac, prescribed when poisoning is diagnosed, or some stomach ailments. Alcohol is used to extract the active ingredient from ipecac root, then mixed with glycerin and sugar syrup. It is intended to get poison out of the system by causing vomiting, but ipecac itself is a poison, so this is a dubious treatment. Let’s check the kitchen!” 

They soon found a large empty bottle, in a rubbish bin, with the label “Syrupus Ipecacuanhae.” George explained that was the technical name used by pharmacists, and that the community did indeed have a couple of bottles, for use in a case of poisoning, which with so many people and so many diverse industries, Oneidans did suffer occasionally. They dumped out the last of the cereal, and speculated for a while about who might have put the ipecac in it. While seldom used, it was a well-known medicine, so they were forced to conclude they had no idea who had done it. Amasa asked some of the people outside if they had seen anyone pour anything into the cereal, but none had, and there would have been ample opportunities, even during the night before, for it to have been done.

Satisfied that Towner was hiding nothing about his attitudes or actions concerning the future of Oneida, Amasa decided to check on Newhouse next, walking over to the two-story trap factory and asking some of the men where to find him. They directed him to a room they called “the laboratory,” which they explained was where Newhouse developed and tested new trap designs. The door was already open, and as he stepped in, he was amazed to see something close to a hundred traps hanging on all of the walls, all of the same design but different sizes and in some cases different materials or decoration.

“Mr. Blodgett, I see you have not departed yet. Soon, I hope, or are you planning to join our community?” Newhouse spoke with a harsh but level tone. Deciding to delay any serious questions until the man had tired of his hostility, Amasa asked if the master trap maker was doing new research.

“Perhaps, Mr. Blodgett, but more like exploration. After I designed the perfect trap years ago, there was still much research to do, to optimize the size and shape for each animal. If your best trap has a piece of metal six inches square, and you want to make a trap half the size, you start with the assumption that the same piece in the new trap would be three inches square. That sounds like half the size, but it is really only one fourth the area. And what about thickness? That will largely determine weight, and depends on how strong you need the piece to be, given the strength of the animal, so the thickness of the new piece may be one third the original, rather than one half or one quarter. Theorizing, as I have just done, is only a start, because you must also make a variety of pieces and test them against various weights, putting a weight on the piece in the right place, dropping it, or using a weight to bend the piece.”

“Interesting,” Amasa commented, with a least a touch of sincerity. “But the bench you are working at has no metal pieces on it, but strips of paper and what look like glue pots.”

“Yes,” Newhouse agreed, “I am studying something very different, a kind of insect trap. My traps are designed for mammals, although one design works well with alligators, and on rare occasions the small traps catch birds. But what about wasps, mosquitos, and those pesky flies that infest every kitchen? We recently learned about a new approach, being explored in Germany, the invention of a man named Frederick Kaiser, no relative I believe of Kaiser Wilhelm who is the current emperor of that far country. He calls it _Fliegenfänger_ , a word your German friends at Zoar may have heard.”

“I have not heard it,” Amasa admitted, “at least not as the name of an invention. But its meaning is quite clear: ‘fly catcher.’”

“Yes,” again Newhouse agreed, “but we are calling it ‘flypaper.’ You take a roll of sturdy paper, and cut a length perhaps a yard long, and cover it with a sticky glue, the kind that does not quickly dry out. You attach a string at one end, and hang it from the ceiling. Flies bump into it and get stuck. A simple idea, but there are several technical challenges. If we manufacture flypaper, how can we deliver it to general stores around the country, without the glue sticking it to everything along the route?” Newhouse and Amasa laughed in unison.

Newhouse showed Amasa some of the sticky paper rolls he was working with. “If the glue is just the right kind, so it will not adhere to itself strongly, you can roll the paper up, and add a wax paper cover outside. Or you put the glue just on one side, and roll with the sticky side inward. But there are two other more subtle additions. First, can you add some odor to the paper that will attract the flies, so they will not need to bumble into it, given that flies are not bumble bees.” Again the two men laughed in unison. “Finally, we can add a poison that will kill the fly in a few minutes, both to reduce the chance it will escape, and to end its unpleasant struggles which cooks in kitchens may find distracting.”

“Speaking of poisons,” Amasa began to shift the topic, “just this morning eight community members were sickened at breakfast, and Dr. George Cragin determined that someone had put syrup of ipecac in the whole wheat breakfast cereal. We found the bottle in the trash, so this was a definite act, perhaps a prank, but also perhaps a serious attack.”

“Lord!” Newhouse exclaimed. “Oh, so now we need to discuss suspects, as we did earlier, before I had proven that the serious attack against us was by James Vail, whom I decisively took out of action. When you and I first met, Father Noyes and I cataloged some of the minor threats, which may just represent feeble attempts to disrupt the peace of the community, rather than serious dangers.” Sensing that this was a good time to spring a little trap of his own, Amasa reported the attempt on the life of John Humphrey Noyes at the cottage on the lake.

Newhouse sat deep in thought for a few moments, then spoke very deliberately. “For two reasons, you must conclude that I was not the man who fired the shots at Father Noyes. First of all, I would have nothing to gain. He and I are the best possible partners in the trap business, and I oppose any change whatsoever in the communal system he established here at Oneida. Second, had I fired the shots I would not have needed two, because with my expert marksmanship the first shot would have killed him.” Amasa solemnly agreed with this analysis.

“Theodore is a possibility,” Newhouse speculated. “He is quite incompetent at many things, despite his fancy Yale education, so missing twice would be his typical score in a contest of marksmanship. He did seem very angry about the Putnam play, probably considering Putnam to be a symbol for his own father. But given that he is a doctor, I would think it more reasonable to count him among the suspects for the ipecac episode.” Amasa nodded.

“Now Towner is a complex case. He might be quite happy for Father Noyes to leave the scene, without any other major changes, on the assumption that he himself could take charge of the community. From his standpoint, the situation has been quite fluid in recent months. Father Noyes wanted his son, Theodore, to take over community leadership from him, but Theodore is both incompetent and uncommitted. Thus, Towner probably does not consider Theodore to be a rival, and may even see some use for him in the political machinations that may be required for Towner to seize control of Oneida. It was obvious to everyone that Father Noyes was physically weakening and might not be able to continue to bear the great burdens of leadership. Whether Professor Mears is directly attacking us or not, he may bring legal charges against Father Noyes, for the early induction of girls into amative intercourse, which makes perfect sense to us but is illegal in surrounding New York State. That is one reason we set up the tiny branch just across Niagara Falls in Canada, as a place of refuge in case Father Noyes needed to escape.” Amasa nodded again.

Newhouse moved his hands in a gesture representing firing a rifle. “As a very experienced soldier in the Civil War, who even went back into action after losing his left eye, Towner is an expert marksman. It takes only one eye to fire a rifle, after all. So had Towner been the attacker, he would have killed Father Noyes, unless of course he did not want to commit murder but merely scare his target into running to Canada. So, while we cannot be sure, Towner is a logical suspect. Who else?”

“What about a woman, rather than a man?” Amasa asked.

“Ah, yes Amasa. If so, the only suspect is Harriet Worden, who after all was James Vail’s lover. I am sure you have figured out that Father Noyes did not instruct her to have that baby with him. I rather suspect she despises me for having captured her lover, even though we have evidence he had a dalliance with an outsider woman whom he deceived into believing he was rich. That is how I understand his dispute with the community about the horses. He apparently used to visit her in our fanciest carriage, drawn by our finest team, while wearing fancy clothing, as evidence of his wealth.”

Amasa noticed that Newhouse had started calling him by his first name again, a sign of emotional manipulation if not true friendship. He took from his leather case the bullet he had pried from the windowsill at the cottage, and asked Newhouse to examine it. He said it was too distorted to identify the specific gun, but probably was from the lighter gauge Winchester, of which the community owned half a dozen, including a couple that were stored where anybody could have borrowed them. He expressed the opinion that the lighter gauge was more accurate, so that was why he himself carried one when he went hunting. The only heavy gauge Winchester was kept at the cottage, locked in a cabinet, of which only he and Father Noyes had keys. That one might be better for defense if the cottage were ever attacked, because even a wound in an arm or leg would do sufficient damage to put an enemy out of action.

After further pleasantries, Amasa left Newhouse’s laboratory, pondering what they had discussed. Newhouse himself remained a suspect, but intuition argued against his guilt. It was possible that the trap maker was so arrogant that he liked to talk about the fact he was a logical suspect, but that could be true whether he was guilty or innocent. Another question came to Amasa’s mind. How would Newhouse behave if someone else launched another violent attack, and he happened to be nearby and carrying his rifle? The result could be quite bloody, and it was even possible Newhouse would mistake a bystander for the guilty party, killing an innocent person.

Back outside the Mansion House, Amasa saw that people were gathering for lunch, and after asking several people about the whereabouts of Harriet Worden, he learned she had set up a picnic for her three children, over under one of the big trees the other side of the wide lawn. As he walked in her direction, Amasa first asked himself why she would have lunch with her children, apart from the rest of the community, if she were still loyal to the community rule that parents and children should not have special relationships, as all adults were the collective parents of all children. Then he thought about the fact that he had let Newhouse into the secret of the two gunshots at the cottage on the lake, and decided it could be strategic to tell each of the suspects, so he could evaluate their reactions.

Harriet Worden had spread a checkerboard cloth upon the grass, and was breastfeeding her tiny daughter, Stella. They exchanged pleasantries, and Amasa said a few encouraging words to Pierrepont, whom he felt he knew well, and to his older brother Ormond, whom he had seen only occasionally in passing. He asked about breast feeding customs at Oneida, and Harriet Worden explained, “Strictly speaking, babies can be weaned as early as six months, but we usually wait a year, adding other things to the diet step by step as the baby is ready. Stella is already eighteen months old, but she likes my milk, so I do provide it, and she has politely learned not to bite me. Today is a special day, because we are celebrating Pip’s ninth birthday, which strictly speaking is not until next Monday, but given all the stressful things that have been happening, I felt we should have this picnic.”

Ormond took this as a challenge to assert his own importance, telling Amasa he was already fifteen years old, and planning to work with his carpenter father, Abram Burt, to build a new barn. Pip interrupted with a comment that both of them were very sad about the horses that had been killed in the fire. Amasa tried to hint that the two boys should go off and play, hoping to speak privately with their mother. This they refused to do, but Pip had brought a checkers set, and they began playing that popular game. Amasa noticed that rather than having a board eight squares by eight, this one was twelve by twelve, and Pip explained that Father Noyes had brought it back with him from a recent visit to the outpost in Canada, saying that French Canadians played this way. Amasa then noticed that Pip seem to be beating his older brother, and hoping that the boys were so deeply into the game they would not pay attention to anything else, he began the difficult conversation with their mother.

“I see that you have adjusted well to the events of recent days, and took a very major part in the Putnam drama.” His mouth formed a smile, and he invested some effort trying to make it express admiration rather than suspicion.

She placed Stella on a blanket and covered her, since she had fallen asleep. “It was my duty to contribute whatever I could to restore our community spirit, call it ‘morale’ or ‘unity’ or whatever you like. I happened to have read the Putnam play recently, and knew it was a patchwork of incoherent scenes of action, comedy, and pathos, not unlike _Fra Diavolo_ , and thus different parts might appeal to different Oneidans. At the same time, and here I bet you have been analyzing me, I needed to sort out my feeling about James Vail, the father of little Stella here. Yes, he was not very far along his path to perfection, but frankly I do not believe he was the villain who burned down our barn.”

This was a jolt to Amasa, who had accepted the guilt of Vail as soon as he saw Newhouse bringing him back to the Mansion House at the muzzle of a gun. Was it possible that Vail was innocent? Perhaps he confessed under duress or confusion, or even did not confess but his angry words were interpreted as a confession. He asked Harriet Worden why she doubted Vail’s guilt.

“It is my intuition,” she replied, “but here at Oneida intuition shades over into spiritual wisdom. Think of the opera and the drama I just mentioned. Was the title character in _Fra Diavolo_ really the brother of the Devil? No, the character is loosely based on an historical Italian who led a group of men in resistance to the French military occupation of Naples. But in the opera, he serves to give life and humor to an otherwise bland story. He was a devil only in the sense that we call someone who tickles us, ‘you devil!’ And what about the savage tribal chief in the Putnam play, Oneactah? He turned out to be a noble savage, seeking to defend his people and right wrongs. If many in the audience thought Putnam represented Father Noyes, well they are free to make that connection, but I did not.”

Amasa then encouraged her to talk about Theodore’s remarkable tirade against Putnam. She said she had not know anything about Putnam’s real history and personality, and was shocked to hear what Theodore reported. She commented that America as a nation thought of itself as a superior community on its way toward perfection, but that was a delusion. America, in her view, was corrupt and violent, as the Civil War had proven, hardly civilized at all. She reminded Amasa that the current President of the United States, Rutherford B. Hayes, had received fewer votes than his opponent, Samuel Tilden, and took office only after a biased and possibly bribed commission had assigned some disputed electoral college votes to him. Amasa found it difficult to get her to focus on Theodore, the man, rather than using him as the rhetorical taking off point for discussions of abstract issues.

“How do you feel about Sewell Newhouse?” he blandly inquired.

“Lord! You have just named the Devil himself!” she exclaimed. “If Vail is truly innocent, then Newhouse is a criminal for casting him as the arsonist. For all I know the fire was set by Newhouse himself, just to give him a chance to play the hero. Or maybe Pat Maloney did it, or it was a pure accident, or the Lord was testing us again, as He has done before. You notice that Newhouse had been sticking close to Father Noyes, during all the discussions about the minor threats against us, as well as major ones. Given how prideful Newhouse is, I can well imagine he was the enemy of us all, who took great pleasure watching us suffer at very close range.”

Struggling to overcome his trepidation, Amasa then described his visit to the cottage on the lake, with Lillie Bailey, to meet with Father Noyes, describing their meeting a bit before revealing the two gunshots that seemed to be an assassination attempt. Harriet Worden expressed great shock, then asked why they could not identify the shooter. He reported they believe the shooter was at a great distance behind some trees.

“Oh, then there can be little question!” She was shaking, whether in fear or anger he could not tell. “Had the shots been at close range, then Newhouse could not have been holding the gun, because he would not have missed. But at a great distance, of course his aim could not have been perfect. Oh, horrors! Newhouse, I am sure! We must make Father Noyes understand. I don’t know why he trusts that monster. Have you ever thought about how much agony Newhouse has caused literally millions of little animals, when they are caught in the jaws of his vicious trap? They may not even look much like traps to the poor creatures, given how the jaws retract so far on both sides. Why Oneida has based so much of its daily work on such a vile industry, I cannot fathom.”

“Mr. Blodgett?” It was little Pierrepont, who had finished the game, beating his elder brother with greater intellect if only a fraction of the physical strength.

“Yes, Pip?” Amasa was sorry the boy had heard his mother’s outburst.

“What you have been talking about worried me.” The boy looked around them. “I see many things, sir, and first thing this morning I saw Father Noyes in the Whitechapel with Lillie Bailey, and John Cragin riding alongside. I think they were going back out to the lake cottage where you say the shots were fired. That does not sound safe. They were all alone, just the three of them.”

“Oh, don’t you worry,” Amasa said soothingly, although from the boy’s expression it was clear he was exceedingly worried. “Your father and Lillie experienced the shooting themselves, so I am sure they took good precautions. Say, I wonder if you have seen where your brother Theodore is? I can’t seem to find him.” Pierrepont reported he thought Theodore was in the library, so Amasa headed off in that direction, so deep in thought he did not take full notice of the fact that Pierrepont ran off in a different direction.

But before he could go far, Harriet Noyes ran up to him, looking very frantic. “Oh, Mr. Blodgett, do you know where my husband is?”

“Pip told me he went out to the cottage on the lake,” Amasa replied. “John Cragin and Lillie Bailey took him there.”

“Oh, no!” She exclaimed. “He was talking so grimly about how it was time to end this travesty, and he needed to take fate into his own hands. But I thought I convinced him to stay here, where many people can protect him. Just John and Lillie? Oh, heavens! He promised if that if he went he would take Theodore and several strong men to serve as guards. Maybe they went earlier.”

“Pip said that Theodore is in the library,” Amasa noted. “I was headed there.”

“Then go!” she screamed. “Tell Theodore to take several strong men to the cottage immediately! I’ll get Sewell.”

She was gone before Amasa could mention that a while earlier Newhouse had been in his laboratory, but she was headed toward the trap factory and probably would find him without delay. He felt a slight touch of dizziness, then realized that the intensity of the morning and noontime had drained his energies, given the weight of his years. Figuring that there would soon be enough people at the cottage to ensure the safety of the community’s leader, and doubting that the earlier gunshots had really been an assassination attempt, he went to his bedroom and napped for about an hour. Gradually returning to consciousness, he wondered if Theodore was in the library, as Pip had suggested, or at the cottage, as his mother believed. He decided to visit the library, and do some reading if nobody was there.

Indeed, Theodore was sitting at a table in the library, and Harriet Worden had joined him. They greeted Amasa, but went on with their conversation. It seemed they were discussing their experience with multiple reproductive partners. Each of them had three children, each child with a different partner, which meant that the two of them represented a group marriage of eight adults and six children, even before taking account of their extended families. They seemed to be debating the wisdom of dissolving the complex marriage system of Oneida, versus simply letting young adults form conventional marriage pairs while preserving the traditional system for older adults. Finally, Amasa was able to ask Theodore why he had not gone to the cottage at the lake to be with his father.

“But, Mr. Blodgett, think for a moment,” he said almost as an insult. “For me to take a team of guards out to the cottage not only requires me to recruit three or four men to become guards. I would also need to find transportation for them. In case you had not noticed, many of our horses have been killed. Yes, some of those that died were draft horses, and we had a few riding horses at other locations around the community, but their numbers are quite limited. Two of our horses were being used by men who were visiting local farms to buy more horses. Other horses may be in use by our commercial travelers, George Allen, Henry Burnham, George Hamilton, John Lord, and Horace Perry. They sell traps and other products widely across the country, and I don’t know who is where right now, but it is likely we own a couple of horses that are not here. John Cragin assured me he would guard my father, and I took him at his word.”

Amasa pondered all the implications, then realized that Theodore might not yet have heard about the earlier attack on Father Noyes at the cottage, since it was still something of a secret among community members. Indeed, he had not heard, so Amasa described the event to him in some detail. It also seemed that Theodore had not heard that eight people had been sickened by ipecac at breakfast, which seemed more strange given that it was hardly a secret. Amasa had difficulty understanding Theodore’s responses to many of the questions he asked, which reinforced the impression that the son of Oneida’s leader was a mass of contradictions, but also somewhat withdrawn from the feelings and experiences of the other members. Until well past the middle of the afternoon, Amasa talked with Theodore, while Harriet Worden listened and occasionally contributed wry comments of her own.

They might have talked until supper time, had not Harriet Noyes entered, in a panic, and immediately demanded that her son ride out to the cottage to protect his father. She said it had taken her an hour to find Newhouse, but he had immediately grabbed his rife, commandeered a horse, and headed there. She had tried to find other men to help, but one had refused, another was still recovering from the effects of ipecac, and there were not many she felt would be competent to serve as protectors. To Harriet Noyes’s irritation, Harriet Worden promised she would go to the cottage, and Amasa decided he should as well.

It took the four of them several minutes to find horses to pull the large carriage, and as they were about the depart, the Whitechapel arrived, driven by John Cragin and Lillie Bailey. Harriet Noyes shrieked in exasperation. “John, did you bring back Father Noyes?”

“No,” John said. “He said he wanted to be alone, I believe with the intention of communicating with the spirit of the Lord about the future of our community. So Lillie and I came straight back here, leaving him in the cottage.”

The four Oneida members began shouting at each other, and Amasa tried to think amidst the bedlam. Logically, John must have learned about the earlier attack by now, from Lillie or Father Noyes himself. In any case, Lillie did not seem any more worried than John, until Harriet Noyes began shouting at them. This seemed to confirm Amasa’s theory that the attack at the cottage had been a fake, staged by John and Lillie, who desperately wanted Oneida to abandon its complex marriage system so that they could be united in a conventional marriage. Perhaps on the way back from the cottage this afternoon they had stopped in a secluded area for an unapproved episode of amative intercourse. One implication of this analysis was that Father Noyes was indeed not in any real danger, but it seemed impossible to convince Theodore and his mother of this, without accusing John and Lillie of a serious trespass. 

The horse that had drawn the Whitechapel was exhausted, so several minutes were wasted finding a replacement. John was able to find three rifles, taking one for himself and giving one each to Theodore and Amasa. Finally the six of them were on their way to the cottage. Theodore and his mother rode in the Whitechapel, which gave Amasa an opportunity to talk with John and Lillie, but with Harriet Worden listening to their conversation, so he needed to be cautious.

“If I recall, he began, you both are accountants.” John and Lillie both nodded. “Then perhaps you can help me resolve an economic mystery. There has been much talk about revising or even dissolving Oneida’s complex marriage systems, chiefly to allow younger couples to engage in conventional two-person marriage if they so wish.” Lillie blushed and John seemed to devote all his attention to the two horses pulling the carriage.

“I am sure there is much to debate about how that would affect the stirpicultural experiment to breed spiritually superior children, and the custom in which an older person guides a younger person in amative intercourse for the latter’s better spiritual advancement.” Amasa paused before asking his main question. “But if Oneida is no longer a unified family, how can it continue to be a communist economy? Father Noyes himself told me that communism cannot be separated from family relations, and the only way to have a large communist society is to have a large, society-wide family.”

John muttered something rambling and shallow about how it was a simple matter to keep the financial matters of the community in a single book, and to avoid using money inside the community. Lillie expressed the view that the two family systems could be combined. Women who did not have exclusive husbands would be available to bear children for the spiritually most advanced men, and wives who had passed the age at which they could have babies could assist single men in amative intercourse. All children could still be raised collectively.

Harriet Worden then offered her view that loosening the rules slightly, without really changing them, would be the best way to unleash romantic experimentation, within communism. She then sang a hymn Amasa had heard several times since coming to Oneida:

“Let us sing, sisters, sing, In the Eden of heart-love — Where the fruits of life spring, And no death e’er can part love; Where the pure currents flow From all gushing hearts together, And the wedding of the Lamb Is the feast of joy forever. Let us sing, sisters, sing.”

They passed through the town, as shadows lengthened in the late afternoon, and continued onward toward the lake. In the distance they saw a rider slowly approaching them, and as they got closer they saw it was a child, somehow handling a rather large mare, but moving slowly. Only when they came very near did they recognize that it was Pierrepont. “Pip!” Shouted his mother, “How dare you leave the community without an adult? Oh, Mercy, we shall need to turn back and escort him home.”

Pierrepont guided the mare between the two carriages, so they could talk easily. “I warned him,” Pierrepont said. “He has a good rifle, so he should be safe. I can get home myself now, and I won’t need to rush. You all should go to the cottage, and protect my father.”

“Pip,” Amasa asked, “what did you warn Father Noyes about?”

“Oh, Mr. Blodgett, I warned him about what you and my mother said at the picnic. The enemy who had shot at him before was Mr. Newhouse. He is the enemy, not Mr. Vail or Professor Mears.”

Amasa was about to explain that Newhouse had not in fact fired the two shots, but probably John Cragin did, as a ruse and not aiming to hit Father Noyes. But before he could frame his thoughts enough to speak, Harriet Noyes shrieked. “Newhouse! Is he the enemy? Oh, God almighty! Already a couple hours ago, I told him my husband was at the cottage, and he immediately saddled his horse and grabbed his rifle, to go there. He plans to murder John Humphrey Noyes!” Theodore cracked his whip, and the Whitechapel began moving forward. The carriage followed, and Pierrepont resumed his slow, lonely trek back to the Mansion House.

Amasa assured Pierrepont’s mother, “In a few minutes Pip will reach the town, and from there on the way is safe and well-marked. What worries me is that Newhouse almost certainly was not the person who fired the shots, but in his current distress Father Noyes may not believe him when he professes his innocence. I cannot now share everything I know, but I believe I am aware of the identity of the person who fired the shots, and that man is not near the cottage at the moment.” She remained quiet, but did not seem comforted by his words.

It was getting dark, and the Whitechapel cart had pulled far ahead. Very light rain had begun to fall, not uncomfortable in the heat of a mid-summer evening, but promising more intense rain to come. Amasa could only imagine what Theodore and his mother were discussing as they rushed forward. Was she upbraiding him for having failed his father, not merely by hiding in the library today, but over the years by losing faith and failing to take over his father’s unusual responsibilities. Or was he burdening her with his monolog about all the difficult choices Oneida faced: If we do this, then that may happen; if we take this other course, then what?

John Cragin then expressed his own fear: “It is so dark, and I believe Newhouse and Father Noyes are inside the cottage, blockading the door against attack. Their guns may be cocked, ready to shoot anyone who attacks. But in this darkness, if the Whitechapel rushes directly to the door, they may shoot before they see who is riding in it!

“Oh, horrors,” Lillie exclaimed. “I feel a terrible intuition that something dreadful is happening. The very Devil has us in his grip!”

Yet as they approached the cottage, everything seemed quiet. The Whitechapel was parked a few feet from the door, although its horse was acting skittish, so Lillie took the reins for the larger carriage’s pair of horses, as John jumped over, swiftly unhitched all three animals, and led them to the nearby fenced field. The two women stayed behind the carriages, while Amasa and John cocked their rifles and carefully crept forward.

“Hello! This is John Cragin. Who is there, in the cottage?”

Theodore appeared at the entrance, holding a lantern. “It is safe, now. You may all come in.

They entered, and fond John Humphrey Noyes standing in the middle of the room, embracing his dear wife but visibly shaken. “The Lord has led us through the parting seas to safety,” he said. “With his guidance, I have defeated Satan.”


	10. The Darkest Night

Absolute consternation filled the mind of Amasa Blodgett. Theodore embraced his father and mother, and seemed totally incapable of action. Lillie Bailey and Harriett Worden collapsed onto a wicker loveseat, with expressions that mixed confusion with terror, apparently not able to accept the happy definition of the situation offered by Father Noyes, and worried that something dreadful had happened. Still carrying rifles, Amasa and John Cragin seemed the only ones ready to do anything, and almost in unison they asked, “Where’s Newhouse?” Father Noyes pointed out the back window, into the darkness.

The dim light inside the cottage was provided by two kerosene lanterns, placed on the floor either side of the door, apparently intended to illuminate any attacker who entered. Their wicks had been retracted to the point that they were just barely burning, so John Cragin turned the nob on one when he picked it up, to make it brighter. He took a light cooking pan from the kitchen to shield the lantern from the rain. He and Amasa checked that their Winchesters were cocked, John slung his over his shoulder so he could pay full attention to the lantern, then they headed outside. Rather that going directly behind the cottage where Father Noyes had pointed, they took a round-about route.

When they entered the field where the horses had been left, they counted four of them, rather than the three that had pulled their two carriages. In whispers, they discussed the danger that their lamp represented, because John was a very obvious target for a gunshot while he carried it. They worked out a tactic in which John would hold the lamp but place himself behind a bush or barrier, so that he would not be a good target, while Amasa crept forward, holding his rifle ready to fire while staying at the far edge of the lamp’s glow. Once Amasa had reached another safe spot, John would join him, and they repeated this maneuver until they came to the back side of the cottage. No one was there, but on the ground lay a rifle identical to the ones they were carrying, and a trail of blood leading away.

Very carefully they worked their way in the direction of the blood trail, although in the darkness it was very difficult to see, so they had to pause repeatedly and scan the ground with the lamp. Fully a hundred yards behind the cottage there was a clump of trees embedded in thick grass and weeds, almost impenetrable, so they circled it before looking inside. There, with great difficulty, they found the body of a man. “Sewell! Can you hear me,” John Cragin shouted. There was no response.

Amasa had seen many corpses in his ninety-one years, so despite the fact he was not a doctor he knew how to examine the corpse of Sewell Newhouse. There was no doubt he was dead, because two heavy gauge bullets had ripped his flesh wide open, when they entered his torso, causing catastrophic loss of blood. Unlike most killings, in which a detective must seek all kinds of clues around the body, there was no need in this case. John Humphrey Noyes had shot Sewell Newhouse as the trap maker approached the last trap he would ever experience, a harmless-seeming cottage beside a placid lake.

“John,” Amasa said in a calm a voice as he could muster, “we should leave him here for the time being, and return to the cottage to consult. Let us first retrieve his rifle.” The rain had begun to fall more vigorously when they entered the cottage. Amasa placed Newhouse’s rifle in the cabinet that had been home to the Winchester ‘76. Amasa thought deeply for a moment, and then gave John an order that he could not yet explain to the young man. “Take the rifle that Father Noyes used to defend himself, that Winchester ‘76 leaning there against the wall, place it beside the body of Newhouse, and return. Oh, and take those two spent cartridges on the floor, as well.” 

The Oneidans were so deep in shock they did not question Amasa’s instructions, or why he took John’s rifle, when handing him the heavier model that had killed Newhouse. He followed John a short distance outdoors, carrying both Winchester ‘73s, then stopped, and with no one watching removed the half dozen cartridges that were in the magazine of each, placing them in his leather case. While John as still on his way, Amasa returned to the five Oneidans inside the cottage. He casually leaned each of the two rifles against the wall, not far from where everyone was standing. He saw that Theodore had set down his Winchester ‘73, and casually Amasa placed in the cabinet and locked it. A few moments later, John returned, and they moved chairs into a circle, sitting very close to each other.

There is much we must discuss,” Amasa announced, “but first of all, is everybody all right?” All seemed to be deep in emotional distress, but containing their feelings. Amasa decided to begin his interrogation with questions that were serious but not as shocking as the questions he would ask later. “What are your theories about who placed the trap on my bed, so many days ago? Harriet Worden, what is your theory?”

“Well, Newhouse, of course!” she exclaimed. “I think most of us had forgotten that attack on you, Mr. Blodgett, and I am sorry if we had. It must have been a terrible experience.”

Harriet Noyes protested, “No, I don’t think it was Sewell. “Yet, I am sorry we did not take that attack on you seriously enough, Mr. Blodgett, but then you were not a member of the community, and we had not yet come to know you very well. But I believe somebody who hated Sewell placed it there, knowing that an attack using one of his traps would incriminate him. So it must have been someone who hated Sewell.” She looked at Harriet Worden with a hint of suspicion, then looked away. “No, probably not anyone in this room, because the trap was placed before James Vail burned the barn, and before Sewell arrested him.”

John Cragin hypothesized, “Perhaps it was Vail, whose anger at the community had been simmering for weeks. He was looking for ways to strike back at us, and his early attempts were not as harmful as his final one. Remember, he set two fires, the first one extinguished by Pat Maloney.”

“Yes.” Lillie Bailey agreed and fell silent.

Sensing it was his turn, Theodore commented, “I think we lack the evidence to decide the issue. George Cragin told me that his spirit pendulum had confirmed that the trap had been placed on your bed by a man. Maybe the trap was a gift, and the man who put it there did not imagine you would enter the room when it was completely dark. Oh, well, perhaps not, because the trap had been set, which cannot be done accidentally. So, somebody intended to threaten you, to scare you back to Zoar. So, logically, the fiend who placed the trap there intended to frighten you, not to kill you, and he was at the heart of the conspiracy to destroy Oneida. It is to your credit, Mr. Blodgett, that the conspirators believed you might discover who they were. But on the other hand, you have not in fact discovered a conspiracy. Perhaps there is none. Finally, in answer to your question: I do not know.”

Father Noyes was the last to respond. “Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? The trap was indeed placed on your bed by Newhouse.”

“Yes,” Amasa agreed. “We shall never be sure, but I think the tap maker set the trap. He actually discussed with me the various motives he might have had, but pretending we were engaged in philosophy rather than criminology. Now I have another question. Who placed the syrup of ipecac in the whole wheat breakfast cereal, causing distress to eight members of the community?”

“Newhouse,” Harriet Worden quickly replied.

“She may be correct,” Harriet Noyes admitted, “But he had no medical training, so even if he set the trap on your bed, I do not think he was responsible for the ipecac prank.”

“Please don’t imagine that my brother George did it,” said John Cragin. I have heard that he quickly diagnosed the problem and treated the patients, but as a Yale-trained physician he could analyze and act quickly. You must not infer from his rapid response that he had caused the problem. Several community members have medical training. It must have been one of the others.”

“Yes.” Lillie Bailey agreed and fell silent.

“Clearly it was just a prank,” Theodore agreed. “As one of those suspicious physicians, I know that moderate doses of syrup of ipecac cause vomiting, but nothing worse. However, the roster of potential suspects is much larger. Why, even one of the smarter boys could have done it. Pierrepont, my tiny half-brother, certainly could understand the effect of ipecac and use in in a boyish prank. Not that I am actually accusing him.” She smiled innocently at Pierrepont’s mother.

Again, Father Noyes went last: “Their wine is the poison of dragons, and the cruel venom of asps. Betrayest thou the Son of man with a kiss?” He turned to look at his son, and Theodore hung his head in shame.

“I admit my guilt.” Theodore said sullenly. “I was so angry at the community’s reaction to my criticism of General Putnam, and I knew the dose would not cause any lasting harm.” He stammered for a moment, then resumed his confession. “But my sin is twice greater. First, I insulted my community rather than inspiring it. Second, in criticizing Putnam I insulted all forms of leadership. Truth to tell, it is much easier for me to believe in the Devil than in the Savior.”

A chorus of protest from the other Oneidans quieted only when Amasa raised his hand and called for silence. “This is not the time for a session of mutual criticism. Later, several members of the community will need to admit their faults, seek guidance, and join with other members in building a better future. But my question about the ipecac was only the second among many questions I must ask, indeed preparing the way for the third: Who fired the two gunshots at this cottage as Father Noyes and I were sitting outside, a few days ago?”

“Newhouse, of course,” Harriet Worden said.

Harriet Noyes cleared her throat and spoke next. “As much as it pains me, I must agree. I have invested so much of my trust in Sewell Newhouse. He was my Putnam, a strong leader who could help me and my family be safe and free. If my husband is our George Washington, Sewell seemed to be our Putnam. But, if so, then maybe Theodore’s criticism of the real General Israel Putnam applied to Sewell Newhouse as well. Perhaps he was self-centered and naturally violent, faults we ignored because his trap business did so much to support our community. He pretended not to know about the attack, and he pretended today to come out here to defend Father Noyes. But he himself was the enemy. The only person at Oneida who completely resisted any change, when he saw us descending into chaos, he turned to murder to end disorder. Perhaps he imagined that Oneida would become a rigidly controlled barracks of workers for his trap factory, or that Oneida was just the biggest model of his standard trap, imprisoning 200 people in one snap. It is hard for me to think this way, but it does seem now to be the truth.”

Going around the circle, it was John Cragin’s turn next, and Amasa felt this was the ultimate test for the young man. Would he tell the truth, discrediting himself and unleashing endless trouble, or would he keep faith with a lie? For a long minute, John did not respond. Amasa listened to the sounds of the rising storm outside, approaching thunder and increasingly heavy rain.

“Mr. Blodgett, I thank you.” John Cragin had been slumped in his chair, but now sat up straight and marshalled his energies. He looked at Lillie Bailey, and she responded with a nod, but also an expression of fear. “Father Noyes has quoted the bible several times, but all of us are capable of that, given his excellent teaching. Thus, I shall first answer: For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind. Out of the south cometh the whirlwind: and cold out of the north. As the whirlwind passeth, so is the wicked no more: but the righteous is an everlasting foundation.” Murmurs from the others expressed the fact that as the Wallingford tornado had ended their Connecticut experiment, a less tangible whirlwind was ready to end Oneida.

John abandoned biblical quotation to state a simple fact. “I myself fired the two shots near this cottage.” Father Noyes shuddered in surprise. “I did not fire at you, Mr. Blodgett, nor at Father Noyes, but into the ground a few paces away from me. My aim was not murder, but to motivate you to remain with us and discover other problems after Vail’s arrest. I did not believe that an organized conspiracy existed, but I knew that many people were dissatisfied with one or another aspect of our customs. If you could keep looking for threats, you yourself, Mr. Blodgett, would stir up further chaos. Yes, I was angry at Father Noyes, all this past decade after he ended my first serious romance, with Ann Eliza van Velzer.” He looked Father Noyes in the eye. “Yes, young Ruth is a marvelous child, very intelligent, and Ann Eliza would love her daughter very much, that is if you allowed parents to love their children exclusively. Ruth’s father, Homer Barron, is a decent fellow, although now he has fathered a baby boy with your daughter Consuelo. I forget, did you order that union last year, just as you ordered Ann Eliza and Homer to produce a child a decade ago?”

All eyes were on Father Noyes, now, as he struggled to express his consternation. He also abandoned biblical quotations to state what he thought was a simple fact. “But we heard the two bullets strike the cottage, and Mr. Blodgett was able to extract one from the windowsill.” Amasa opened his leather case, and withdrew the bullet from a side pocket, passing it around for each person to inspect, being careful not to let anyone see the rifle cartridges that filled the bottom of the case. Theodore reached for one of the Winchesters, and pointed at John.

“No!” Lillie Bailey exclaimed. “I know he did not shoot at you, because he and I had planned this ahead of time, with just the goal he mentioned. He had prepared early by shooting one bullet into the windowsill, and I was inside the cottage, as Mr. Blodgett and Father Noyes will remember. When John fired twice, I banged with my fist on the inside of the wall, pretending to be his two shots striking the cottage. Oh, I am so sorry!”

“Bang and bang, thump-thump!” Amasa explained that his first clue about what had really happened was the fact that the rhythms of the two sounds were different, because Lillie did not delay as long between her two hits against the wall, as John had in firing his two gunshots. “But, unfortunate as that episode may be, both in intentions and consequences, it was not an isolated incident. I asked first about the trap on my bed, and second about the ipecac in the breakfast cereal, to prepare you for the realization that many people have acted in recent weeks in ways destructive of the community. Then let me ask my fourth question: Who else has acted in a way that endangered Oneida?”

This time, Father Noyes spoke first. “James Towner.”

“Exactly,” Amasa agreed. “He is not here now, but back in the Mansion House, sleeping peacefully, I’d wager. What do people think of him?”

Theodore spoke first, as he put down the rifle. “Since we are all being honest now, I must admit that my feelings toward Towner are a mixture of anger and respect. Not long ago, in a major discussion the community held about the long term future of our leadership, I offered myself, humbly, as my father’s successor, and indeed my father seemed supportive of my application.” Father Noyes nodded, then Theodore continued. “But Towner argued against me. As I recall, he was willing to have me as his leader, if my father could honestly say that God had spoken through him about the proper line of succession. But my father never did say that I was his God-ordained successor, so Towner was within his rights, even within his responsibilities, to raise questions.

“He was not convinced that I had abandoned my earlier agnosticism, learned at Yale but frankly expressing my own character. He argued that our leader must be a channel for God’s guidance, not a pusillanimous doubter. He suggested that the wider Spiritualist Movement and others who share some but not all of our principles would mock us, if we abandoned faith in favor of lack of conviction. At first I thought Towner simply wanted the leadership position for himself, and that may have been partly true. But when my anger cooled, I began to analyze things from his perspective, and found it very challenging. I will never forget what he said at the end of the debate. I even wrote it down, and memorized it, as if it were the theme of a noteworthy sermon: ‘The outcome of my own experience in infidelity makes me look cheerfully and hopefully upon Theodore’s case, and the case of all those who want to think, as they say for themselves.’”

In a sharp and somewhat loud tone of voice, Harriet Noyes disagreed with her son. “Towner was a refugee from that ghastly Berlin Heights commune. I would say that was truly an experiment in free love, except that it seemed more like costly love. We organize our sexual relations in the service of our journey toward perfection. For Towner, they are merely satisfaction of selfish lusts, giving a man the freedom, if that is the correct word, to exploit women.”

“No, not at all!” Lillie Bailey exclaimed. The others had become accustomed to her silence, and now that she expressed her views emphatically, both Harriets showed surprise. “To be sure, some men exploited the women at Berlin Heights, but the women I have spoken with who were there say that most of the men were sincerely working for women’s equality, and that they themselves took active roles in designing the various communal experiments. For the men as well as the women, leading feminists were heroines, such as Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Victoria C. Woodhull who came from the same part of the country.” Now the two Harriets’ had different expressions, Harriet Worden smiling, and Harriet Noyes frowning.

“But it is not accurate to say that James Towner exploited women during the heyday of Berlin Heights experiment, because he simply was not there. Yes, he attended a convention of socialists there, and contributed occasionally to the community’s publication, _Social Revolutionist_. But he and his wife Cinderella were living in Iowa, not Ohio, until they moved near Cleveland after he was mustered out of the army because of his terrible wound. I have talked with his wife privately, and she agrees they participated in some of the experiments for a while, but then they repented and applied to join Oneida. But we initially rejected him. Only something like eight years later, after he had helped us with his legal advice, did we invite him to join us. He brought several thousand dollars with him, along with his family, which included a sister-in-law and a brother-in-law.” Her voice trailed off, and she fell silent again.

After an awkward pause, John Cragin added his thoughts. “While I do not pretend to understand what Berlin Heights was all about, clearly it was a chaotic situation, in which a few hundred people kept creating and dissolving communal experiments, in which many members may have suffered, even Towner himself. I forget the details, but I believe he and Cinderella had, shall we say, a philosophical debate about free love after she had an intimate relationship with Frank Barry, the original commune leader. How Franks’ wife, Cora, felt, I can only imagine.”

Harriet Noyes interjected, “I believe her first name was Cordelia, and her husband’s was Francis.”

Harriet Worden responded with a question. “So, is James Towner the cause of discord, like playing both F natural and B natural − for Frank and Barry − on a piano? Oh is he more like a measure of the discord we already experience? I would say the latter, and the question becomes what is the smallest change we should institute to achieve harmony. Do we add a sharp to the F or a flat to the B?” Just then, a lightening flash followed immediately by thunder told them the storm was directly overhead. “Oh, listen to that! More dissonance than I could ever create on a piano. Do you think God has sent this storm to express our human conflict through nature? How dramatic! she laughed. “Oh, I suppose nobody here but me thinks of the fourth movement of Beethoven’s _Pastorale Symphony_.”

“No,” Amasa disagreed. “God did indeed send this storm, but not to transform our terrible situation into an opera or theatrical spectacular. God had a very specific reason for sending this storm, but I will explain it later. Now, I must ask another question. If Towner represents how someone who joined the community in adulthood can endanger Oneida, can you name someone dangerous who was born here? I’ll give you a hint; we mentioned the name earlier.”

Again Father Noyes provided the answer: “Pierrepont. I was astonished when he rode all the way out here to warn me, and I marveled that a nine year old boy could care so deeply that he would go to such effort. He said quite plainly that he had been with you, Mr. Blodgett, and you, Harriet Worden, when you revealed that the shots had been fired at me by Newhouse. I had been praying for guidance, and recalled the biblical prophecy, “and a little child shall lead them.” So I believed he told the truth. I ordered him to return to the community, and I loaded the Winchester. 

“Rather than coming to the door, Newhouse approached the cottage from the rear. The sun was only just setting, so I could see him clearly, out the open back window. I shouted to him a passage from Judges, ‘wherefore then are ye come up unto me this day?’ In my mind were the next words of the verse, ‘to fight against me?’ but I did not speak them. Towner shouted back, ‘Today we meet our Maker!’ He was not diligent in his bible reading, so I was forced to interpret his words right then and there, that he planned to send my to my Maker with another gunshot. Yet, now that I know he did not fire the earlier shots at me, I must conclude he meant that he and I would stand shoulder to shoulder against imminent attack by the Devil. Of course, he also did not know who had fired the two earlier shots.”

“It is my turn to confess a sin,” Amasa said sadly, “one of omission. I failed to disagree clearly enough with Harriet Worden’s suspicions about Newhouse, and Pierrepont, in his youthful ignorance, thought that his elders were speaking the lethal truth rather than considering dire possibilities. But even in saying that, it sounds that I am blaming Pierrepont, one of the most intelligent and straightforward members of your community.”

“Indeed,” Theodore remarked, “if a son of my father deserves eventually to become his successor, it may be Pierrepont rather than myself.”

Harriet Worden contributed her own confession. “I was angry at Newhouse, both for demanding that we adhere rigidly to our old traditions, and for defeating James Vail, the father of my tiny daughter. Truth to tell, I was angry at Vail himself, not primarily for the fire, but for having abandoned me in favor of some outside girl, who wisely rejected his affections but did not return him to me. While I was so busy brooding about my own disappointments, I failed to think about how Pierrepont must feel. Even as I chafed at our restrictions, and sang songs about freedom, I failed to realize that Pierrepont himself had free will and an independent mind. He is guilty of nothing, except being motivated by love and good will. He wanted to save his father, and hoped his father would show a hint of love in return.”

Amasa was now ready to ask his penultimate question. “Is there someone else who constitutes a danger to Oneida, who is neither an outsider who joined in adulthood, nor someone born into the community?”

For a third time, John Humphrey Noyes provided the correct answer. “Myself. I have been with the community since its beginning, and was born before its birth. When I was younger, I used to experience terrible episodes I called ‘eternal spins,’ gloomy, confused, loathing myself. Then I discovered Perfection, or so I thought, and I threw all my life’s energies into saving all humanity through Oneida. But now I have killed my most loyal follower, who was totally innocent of any crime.” The other Oneidans gasped, and each began to speak rapidly, a cacophony of objections, that disintegrated into expressions of despair, as they all realized that Father Noyes spoke the truth.

Amasa knew it was time for his last question. “Dear friends, what, therefore, should we do?” No one spoke. The storm was departing, and the thunder had retreated into the background. Amasa looked out the nearest window and saw that rain was no longer falling. “I said that God had sent this brief storm for a reason. Now is a good time to tell you what that reason was, rather than make you guess. The rain has erased the rail of blood that John and I followed from this cottage to the dense underbrush where Towner’s body lies. Tomorrow, when the sun shines brightly again, no one will be able to prove that he was killed while approaching this place, or that the fatal shots were fired from here. His body may not be found for many days, even weeks, and nature will take its course with his corpse.

“You may think I am insensitive to speak of such things, but Newhouse himself was an inventor and a hunter. He knew that among the rifles owned by Oneida, as John’s and Lillie’s accounts can document, only one was a Winchester ‘76. The rifles we have now, and others back at the community, date from 1873, and use lighter ammunition. A sheriff, examining the body, will doubt that Towner committed suicide, even though the rifle and empty cartridges lie beside him, because two shots were fired, but self-murder is not inconceivable. I think you can immediately see flaws in this analysis, so let me hear them.” 

The three Oneida men discussing the theories the sheriff might have about who killed Newhouse, while at the same time the three women discussed how his frail, elderly wife Eveliza would react to his horrible death. As the Oneidans debated, Amasa opened his leather case, took out paper and one of those eraser-tipped pencils, and began to write. In a mixture of panic and exhaustion, the six Oneidans shared half-formed thoughts, hardly listening to each other, lapsing into confusion.

Amasa interrupted by restating his difficult question. “It is possible that no one will even know the cause of Newhouse’s death, but we do, so what shall we do about it?”

John Humphrey Noyes rose to his feet, and in a somber tone of voice, said, “I am the guilty one, so I must be punished. You, Theodore, must become the savior of Oneida, and lead its people to Perfection. My fatal flaw should not be inherited by you.” He struggled to hold a dignified pose, even as tears began to run down his cheeks.

“Yes, father,” Theodore replied. He was no longer pointing the rifle at John Cragin, and now leaned it against his chair, as he stood beside Father Noyes and gently placed his hand around one of the patriarch’s wrists. “In the morning, I shall need to escort you to the sheriff’s office.”

“No!” shrieked Harriet Noyes. “The sheriff was a friend of Newhouse, and praised him mightily, when taking custody of James Vail. He will treat your father harshly, if we surrender him to the corrupt court system of the outside world! We must flee to Canada, to the place we have prepared in case Mears sent the police to arrest him on the trumped-up morals charges.” She tried to hold her husband’s other wrist, but John Humphrey Noyes pulled away from both his son and wife, grabbed the rifle that was leaning against the chair, and ran part way up the stairs to the second floor, pointing the rifle at himself, his right hand on the trigger. Theodore started forward, then pulled back. “Father! Don’t kill yourself. One death is already too many. We must consider alternatives. Oh, if I had only been able to take over your responsibilities, you would not be in this terrible situation!”

From the far side of the room came the voice of John Cragin, who now was holding the other rifle. “I deserve to die, not you! I stupidly pretended to shoot at you, and now my rash action has the effect of actually shooting you. Indirectly but definitely, I was the cause of Newhouse’s death. Yes, I resented your dictatorship, Father Noyes, but your dream of perfection is what gave meaning to our lives. You should live on, and continue to inspire us. As Jesus said, ‘whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.’ Today, I am the one who must be crucified, not you!”

Desperately, Lillie Bailey implored John to put down the rifle, searching her memory for a biblical quotation that might convince him. “You are my lover, not my savior. Father Noyes must bear this cross for us. ‘He saved others; himself he cannot save.’”

John Humphrey Noyes held the muzzle of the rifle under his chin, right hand still on the trigger, yet still had the mind for theological debate. “No, Lillie, those were the mocking words of the priests, and scribes, and elders whose honors would be swept aside by Christianity. I feel the spirit of Christ rising within me, and I shall become the Christ now. ‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.’”

John Cragin, moved into the same position, the muzzle of his rifle under his chin. The three women wailed, and Theodore seemed utterly confused. In the same instant, John Humphrey Noyes and John Cragin shut their eyes, jerked, and pulled the triggers. Except for two feeble clicks from the rifles nothing happened.

Amasa sat comfortably in his chair, and motioned for the others to sit back down. “‘Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’ A few days ago, Father Noyes and Sewell Newhouse offered this biblical quotation as one of the symbolic attacks against Oneida, and Father Noyes challenged me to say what the very next word in the bible might be. I could not guess, and he told me the next word was John, referring to John the Baptist, who soon lost his life. Here, now, two Johns, rather than just one, have approached death, but not yet lost their lives. I take word puzzles very seriously, so in odd moments over the past few days I have read my bible, looking for this quotation. I actually found it not once but three times, in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Only in Mark 1:3-4 is the next word ‘John.’” 

From his leather case he took his well-worn King James bible, and opened to a bookmarked page. “This is the version I prefer, Luke 3:4-6: ‘As it is written in the book of the words of Esaias the prophet, saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low; and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways shall be made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’ Those ancient words should give us hope for a better resolution of today’s calamity.”

The six Oneidans took their seats, each moving in a way that expressed a different variety of consternation. John Cragin fell into his chair, in total exhaustion. Lillie Bailey, moved more gently, pushing her chair beside his, then sitting in a withdrawn position, knees held tight against her chest. Theodore Noyes sat with legs straight out but arms akimbo. Harriet Worden’s expression fluctuated, at some moments gnashing her teeth in apparent anger, but emitting brief laughter that seemed to denote sarcasm. Harriet Noyes’s mood was one of pure sadness, weeping profusely. John Humphrey Noyes seemed to have regained a degree of composure, or was using all his energies to retain dignity.

Amasa handed Father Noyes the piece of paper on which he had written, and asked him to read it aloud. Oneida’s leader spoke its words haltingly, as if struggling to understand their meaning. “We made a raid into an unknown country, charted it, and returned without the loss of a man, woman or child.”

“That,” Amasa said, “is how a leader of a brilliant social experiment might summarize its course, even if the final result was different from what had been hoped.”

John Cragin objected, “But my mother’s life was lost, when she drowned along with Eliza Allen in the sinking of the Rebecca Ford in the Hudson River. And today Sewell Newhouse died. Many others have died, including one of Towner’s sons.”

“In a sense,” Amasa commented, “we all die, and I shall do so soon enough. Yet you believe that Jesus is not dead, nor are Matthew, Mark and Luke, or all the original Christians of what I believe you call The Primitive Church. John, when your brother had your mother’s skull cleaned and varnished, he was in his own way expressing belief in her immortality.”

Of all six Oneidans, Harriet Worden seemed most at ease, even somewhat detached from the emotions shared by the others. “Then, indeed, Father Noyes should immediately, and without even returning to the Mansion House, go to our outpost near Niagara Falls, just across the border into Canada. We cannot tell anyone what we know about the fate of Newhouse, even, sadly, his widow Eveliza. People may conclude he also has gone to Canada, and perhaps Mrs. Noyes should accompany her husband there. If the corpse of Newhouse is found soon, we can express as much surprise and shock as anybody. If it is not found soon, rumors will fly, and we can pretend to be as uncertain as anybody. That should be easy for you, Theodore, because you are always so uncertain about everything. Theodore should return to the Mansion House, where his uncertainty will serve a purpose by preventing Towner from immediately taking over the leadership, and giving the entire community the time it needs to decide its future.”

Amasa looked at her, an expression of compassion on his face, and agreed. “And you, too, should be part of the debate about the future of Oneida, as should all the women equally with the men. However, one other person needs to go to Canada, at least for a while, your son, Pierrepont.” Murmurs of agreement came from around the circle of Oneidans. Clearly, Pierrepont was the one other person who knew that an altercation between Newhouse and his father must have occurred at the cottage. “But he will not stay there forever. Indeed, I believe I can prophesy that whatever Oneida becomes in the coming years, if it holds together, Pierrepont will become its leader. Not you, Theodore, but I believe you accept that fact. I do not know whether nine-year-old Pip is proof that your system of stirpicultural breeding really produces superior children, but he is a very remarkable young man.”

John Humphrey Noyes nodded solemnly, then stood, and in a resonant voice proclaimed, “We made a raid into an unknown country, charted it, and returned without the loss of a man, woman or child.”

*****

Two days later, after a good rest and observing that the Oneida community seemed to adjust well to the departure of its leader, Amasa headed home to Zoar. He sat beside Lillie Bailey in the Whitechapel, with John Cragin riding a horse beside them, the short distance from the Mansion House to the train station. They did not discuss the events of the past days, but he imagined they can come to believe that no one individual bore special responsibility for the death of Newhouse and retreat of Father Noyes, since some kind of end to the Oneida experiment was bound to occur, with unavoidable costs. A stray thought entered his mind, as he realized he never had visited the Oneida silverworks, as he had intended to do. Would Oneida’s future somehow be silver?

Nonetheless, Amasa felt some regret that he had not been able to act sooner and more decisively. It was the story of his life, struggling to help the radical communal experiments of the nineteenth century, uncertain whether they foreshadowed a new civilization that would arise in the twentieth century, and lacking much power to shape their actual outcomes. He realized that this might be his last mission, symbolizing in its ambiguities the various outcomes of all the earlier ones. He often thought about publishing accounts of all the earlier mysteries he had solved in connection with many other utopian communes, and he did plan to add a new diary to the shelf he had already penned as a supplement to his failing memory, back at Zoar. Indeed he knew that as the socialist experiments reached for an ideal future, he himself represented the real past.

At the station, he assured John that he could get his bags onto the train himself, when it arrived in a hour or so. John hitched his horse to the back of the Whitechapel, took his seat beside Lillie, and they put their arms around each other as they turned back toward Oneida. Amasa could imagine them singing to each other, “I love you, O my sister.” “I love you, O my brother.” At least for these two members of the Oneida community, the story could have a happy ending.


End file.
